Rought Start to A Long Week

I'm not a fan of getting up in the morning in general. I like to sleep. I especially hate getting up on Monday mornings.

I know this week is going to be a long and tiring one because Nick is on the afternoon shift. That means he works from 4-12. With me not getting home from work most days until nearly 5:30, it means we don't get a lot of family time. I'm also then solely responsible for getting Darcy's supper, keeping her entertained and getting her ready for bath. That in itself can be quite exhausting.

Anyway, my saving gace in the morning is a nice, warm shower. However, in an old house like ours it takes a few minutes for the water to warm up, so I usually turn it on and let it run for a minute before I get in. That is normally pretty uneventful. Well, this morning when I turned on the shower, the shower head was for some reason facing out into the general bathroom instead of into the bathtub. As a result, when I turned on the shower I got a face full of ice-cold water. My pyjamas got soaked and so did the floor.

It's going to be a great week. The only thing that is saving the whole week is the fact that my brother, sister, brother-in-law and niece and nephew are coming for the weekend. Hooray! Darcy is already full of ideas of what we're going to do when Laura and Lukie get here.

Public Service Announcements

I had an eventful stop at the food court for lunch today (yummy NY Fries). Anyway, here are some things that need to be said.

If you need to loudly blow your nose in the middle of the store, please throw your used tissue into the garbage can that is standing right beside you. Please do not throw it in the abandoned cart a few feet away. Garbage cans are for garbage. Shopping carts could possibly be used for something I might want to buy later, and I don't want whatever's in that tissue on my items.

Attention ladies. If for some reason you feel you need to wear leggings, please do not tuck in your shirt. It seems this would be common sense, but apparently a reminder is sometimes needed.

If you enjoy Easter Cream Eggs as much as I do, check your local Zellers store. The one near here still has a whole stash of them for 20 cents each!!!!!

Enjoy the rest of your day.

Doctor's Appointment this morning

I just got back from my check up with the obstetrician. For the most part, everything seems good. I've gained 4 pounds, the baby's heartbeat was strong, my blood pressure was right on track, all of that is all good.

One concern surfaced from the ultra sound we had done on April 2nd. It's a condition called placenta previa (warning, detailed information included in the link). It can cause severe bleeding late in pregnancy that can be dangerous for me and the baby. I have to go for another ultra sound around week 32 to check on the status of things. From the reading I've done this morning I've learned that this condition corrects itself in over 90% of cases. If it is still present in that ultra sound then we will have to schedule a c-section which should prevent a lot of the problems we could face if I went into labour naturally. My sister experienced this with her last pregnancy and it corrected itself.

So, until the next ultra sound I just have to take things easy a bit. No strenuous activities that could lead to bleeding. I think that means scrubbing the toilet. No heavy lifting, all that fun stuff. Hopefully it will correct itself and this will all be a non-issue.

Irrational Fear

If you know me well you know that I have an irrational fear of snakes. I have no idea what caused this fear, but whenver I see a snake, I go nutty. I get paralyzed with fear. This includes seeing snakes on TV, or a picture of a snake in a book. As for going to the reptile display at a zoo, it's out of the question.

On Friday night I had an evening program I had to lead for work which was being held at the home of one of the families from the church. As I was walking from my car to the house, one of the boys who comes to our kids' club was walking past me on the street, and he called out to me, "Hey Miss Sue, I've got something to show you!" Innocently I wait for him to approach until I see that what he has in his hand is a snake. I assume it's a rubber snake at first until I see it open its mouth. He's walking towards me with a snake in his hands.

We had recently done a series of lessons involving animals. When the snake lesson came up, I was vulnerable and I told the kids I was terrified of snakes. This bright boy remembered that and thought he'd have some fun with me. He approached me with the snake and I had no choice but to run away. That's right, a 34-year old pregnant woman chose to run away from a 9-year old boy carrying a small garter snake. It was embarassing, but he wanted to touch me with the snake. I couldn't let that happen. Finally his cousin came and took the snake away from him so he'd leave me alone.

That was the last straw for me. It was so embarassing to react that way in front of kids who look up to me as an authority. I also thought about the alley behind our house. It's got a lot of overgrown grass and weeds and such. It's quite likely there's snakes in there from time to time. What if Darcy found one and brought one home? What would I do? I've got to do something to deal with this ridiculous fear.

The problem is I once read an article in the paper about a woman who wanted to deal with her snake phobia and her treatment involved her going to some sort of snake pit. Just the thought of that is enough to keep me from dealing with this. I've got a friend who is a social worker with a minor in psychology. She's done some work with fears in the past and she and I talked about this yesterday. She's come up with a much more reasonable plan. She says I don't ever have to love snakes or want to watch Snakes on a Plane or anything like that. I just have to be able to react calmly if faced with one. During our conversation about snakes I was very jittery and uncomfortable. She said the first step she wants me to take is to intentionally have 4 conversations about snakes over the next month, each one increasing in length, until I can at least talk about snakes without getting jumpy.

In the words of Homer Simpson, "self-improvement has always been a hobby of mine" so I'm going to deal with this. I won't let the snakes beat me!

Good Weekend

We had a busy, but good weekend around our house. Both Nick and I had to work at times over the weekend, but we managed to have some good family times.

Nick was either sleeping or gone all day Saturday, so Darcy and I had a great Mommy-Daughter day. We took our first trip of the year to the little park in the next block where she loves to play on the slide and the swings. It's a pretty swampy park, so if there's any rain at all you can't really go there, which is why our first trip took place so late in April. I took the camera with us to document the trip but when we got there I realized it had been put in the case with the power still on so the batteries were dead. D'oh!

Yesterday afternoon was the best. Nick and I were both off and we had a great walk in our favourite park by the Detroit River. After supper we went outside and played with the sidewalk chalk Darcy had gotten for Easter. I managed to get some pictures this time, with the sole purpose in mind of posting them here. However, I was usurped by my husband last night when he posted the best one on his blog first.

I'll close with a conversation that Darcy and I had on Friday:

D: This bathroom is too hot. We need a new bathroom.
Me: Where are we going to get this new bathroom?
D: Maybe the new baby's mommy and daddy can give it to us.
Me: Darcy, who do you think the new baby's mommy and daddy are going to be?
D: I don't know.
Me: Aren't your mommy and daddy going to be the new baby's mommy and daddy too?
D: I don't like that.

Looks like we've still got some work to do there!

Cravings Confession

The pregnancy cravings are hitting big time. I don't seem to have cravings for bizarre things (like pickles and ice cream), but I do get cravings that I just need to eat right away. Some of these are for things I normally enjoy, but others are for things I wouldn't normally eat.

For example, lately the big craving has been for Cadbury Easter Creme Eggs. I can't get enough of these things. This afternoon I found a place that is selling off their stock for 25 cents each. I've hit the jackpot!

This one though, totally surprised me. I haven't eated at Burger King in ages, but the other week Nick and I drove past Burger King while I was hungry. The smell coming out of there (usually repulsive to me) smelled like heaven. I didn't get a Whopper that day, but I wanted one. I wanted one for days. Did I mention this particular Burger King is right down the road from the church where I work? I did drive through there three times in one week recently. I didn't tell Nick about that for a few days afterwards. I knew his health food meter would go off the charts with that one.

Another one is Honeycomb cereal. I love this stuff and usually have a bowl at night before I go to bed. I can excuse this one though because they're allegedly made with whole grains (it says so right on the box) so this is actually good for a pregnant woman to eat! I should eat them twice a day!

Halfway

This past Saturday marked the official halfway point in my pregnancy. It just seems to be flying by.

Of course, the casual observer still wouldn't be 100% certain that I'm pregnant just from looking at me, but I can see how much I'm showing. I haven't posted another picture because it's still really hard to capture that in a picture. I get teased a lot by my co-workers about my lack of a belly, but what can you do? The baby is growing on schedule so that's all I can hope for. My maternity pants aren't falling down as much as they used to, so something is happening!

My weight is up about 6 lbs from my normal weight, but when you consider that I also lost 6 lbs at the beginning then that puts me up about 12 lbs. Or at least that's what I tell myself. My hips measurement is up about 8 inches and my waist measurement is up about 10 inches.

The coolest part is that I'm starting to feel a lot of movement now. When I'm relaxing after supper is usually the best time. There have even been a few times when Nick has been able to feel it from the outside which is cool for him too.

Also at the halfway point we aren't much closer to deciding on a girl's name than we were at the beginning. We had a good boy's name picked out from when Darcy was born, so we're sticking with that. I've got a whole post written about the naming struggles, with some of our options included but Nick isn't sure if he's comfortable with me posting it. Stay tuned on that.

I'm still nauseous and gagging frequently, so I'm back on the medication twice a day. I'd prefer not to be, but this way I can live my life pretty normally. All in all it's going pretty well.

On a Darcy note, I took her out for breakfast on Saturday morning, just the two of us. She was pretty excited about the idea, a little too excited. We sat in a booth facing each other, she in a booster-seat provided by the restaurant. At one point she was so busy trying to look at something that she tipped her booster seat right over. She went all the way down to the floor and smashed her head on the floor. Oh the screams! I felt like a candidate for mother of the year. The waitress brought her a balloon and all was well. I sat beside her for the rest of the meal (which was good because friends of ours came in and ended up joining us). She's got a good bump on her head. It's not the first and it surely won't be the last.

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My Mom doesn't like adding comments, but after reading the last paragraph she emailed to tell me about a time when they took us camping when we were kids. I was probably a bit younger than Darcy is now. The kids had been put to bed while the adults stayed at the fire. I was so busy peeking out the window trying to see what was going on at the campfire that I fell out of my top bunk! Like mother, like daughter, I guess!

New Perspective

I never cease to be amazed when I am caused to think about how differently the world looks through the eyes of a two-year old.

The last few nights Darcy has checked with me several times about whether or not I'm going to close the door of her room when I say goodnight to her. "Are you going to close it properly?" she'll ask. Then last night before bed she started talking about how when Daddy comes to wake her up in the mornings, her door has already opened "all by itself".

It hadn't even occurred to me that she would think that. I've mentioned here before that she's a sweaty sleeper. We'd been closing her bedroom door when we put her to bed so she'll go to sleep, but then we've been opening the door before we go to bed to allow more air to circulate and to hopefully keep her cooler. Now she's apparently been freaked out by how her door kept opening by itself in the night.

The babysitter's daughter had her baby (a little girl, Emma Grace) on Tuesday evening. So, everything is back to normal today. Darcy hadn't been there since last Tuesday, so I wonder if she's going to have some accidents today while she gets used to being there again. We'll see in a couple of hours.

That's about it for today.

Overheard Yesterday

At the day care when I picked Darcy up at the end of the day...

Darcy: Mommy, we're going outside to play. Did you come to watch us?
Me: No, Darcy, it's time to go home.
Darcy: We're going outside to play. Do you want to watch us?
Me: Don't you want to come home with Mommy?
Darcy (giving it a slight amount of consideration): Ummm, no thanks.

Last night at supper after she had almost finished the chocolate I had given her as a treat and I was just beginning to open my own chocolate eggs...

Darcy: Mommy, would you like to share with me?
Me: I don't think so Darcy. You already had a big chocolate. This one is mine.
Darcy: Please please please. What if I'm cute?
Me: No, Darcy, this is Mommy's chocolate.
Darcy: Don't you want to share with me Mommy? Say OK.
silence follows
Darcy: Say OK Mommy, say you want to share your chocolate with me.
more silence
Darcy: I don't hear a word...

After this conversation she arranged a trade for a bit of my chocolate egg for a piece of the remnant she was working on. I guess I took too long to open my egg because she still ate the piece she was supposed to trade with me! The tiny little piece that she ended up trading with me was pretty melty and gross and I'm pretty sure it had some spaghetti sauce on it leftover from her supper.

Different Day

I think I've mentioned recently that our babysitter's daughter is having her first baby any time now. She decided a while back that when she's in labour, she wants her mom in the room with her. So we were told that when she goes into labour, we'd need to make other arrangements for the day.

The problem with labour is that you often get some false alarms. Today is the third day we've had to make other arrangements for our child care. We're working around it. Last week I ended up taking part of Tuesday afternoon off so Nick could be on time for his evening shift at work. We needed to arrange something again last Thursday, but Nick happened to be off that day so it was no trouble. We were talking over the weekend and we said we'd be fine this week, as long as she wasn't in the hospital on Tuesday. Well, we got the call last evening that she'd been admitted to the hospital but that labour was progressing slowly. We'd need to make alternate arrangements again today. I had several appointments lined up that I couldn't cancel. Nick is on the day shift. Trouble. So we did something I've never wanted to do.

The church where I work runs a full-time day care centre here. I called and they had a space available in her age group today, so Darcy is here in the building with me. She was so excited at the prospect of going to "school" today that I'm surprised she slept last night. Her first words this morning were "Is it time to go to school now?" I've just been nervous about her being in the same building as me, and me being a distraction for her. I've seen it happen with some of the other teachers whose kids are here.

I've been nervous about how she'd adapt to the change in scenery, but I think she's doing great. They have a short church service every morning so I spied from another room to see how she was. She was doing great. Each class sends a representative up to sing a song, and she was chosen from her class, because it's her first day. So she picked "Twinkle, Twinkle" and sang her little heart out up at the front with the teacher.

I didn't want her to know I'm here, but a teacher just brought her down here because they couldn't find her coat for outside time. It's a different teacher than the one who checked her in, so they didn't know we had borrowed someone else's locker. I asked her for a hug and she said, "OK, but now it's time to go outside." Translation: I'm wasting valuable time down here.

So, who's having the hard adjustment? I think she's going to love it so much she's not going to want to go back to the babysitter's house!

Easter

We had a great Easter weekend. Because of Nick's work schedule we decided to call the Easter bunny to see if he could visit our house on Saturday evening instead of Sunday morning. He was more than happy to oblige. Here are a few pics...

On the Easter Egg Hunt

A full basket (this picture has had red eye reduction done!)

Hey, there's stuff inside these eggs!

Enjoying the chocolate.

Chocolate Dora! Thanks Grandma and Pa! Mommy and Daddy would never have bought me anything so big!

Dressed for church. If you look carefully you can see that she put her own shoes on. The hair clips didn't even stay in until we left the house! Thanks to Grandmaman and Papa for the news dress and to Grandma and Pa for the new shoes! It's an old sweater, as you can tell from the sleeve length, but we weren't expecting an Easter morning with a wind chill of -15!

Monday morning. I just took this picture while I was doing the rest of this post. She was sitting on the couch enjoying "Sesame Street" and I just loved the way the sun was shining on her hair.

All in all it was a great weekend. My favourite moment was on Sunday morning when I was in the kitchen getting her cereal ready. I went to the living room to check on her and of course she had gotten into her basket and already had the ears eaten of one of her little bunnies! Ahh, the traditional Easter morning chocolate breakfast. Yummy!

Happy Easter

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Easter! We're kind of downscaling things this year, because of Nick's work schedule. Darcy and I had a fun morning at the mall today, where she got her face painted to look like the Easter bunny. She didn't want to stand still long enough for me to get a great picture though.

So, happy Easter from our little Easter bunny!

As an added bonus, it's -2 degrees and has been snowing on and off for a few days. Here is a picture of my daffodils that were blooming beautifully last week (you know when it was 28 degrees!).

Bit of a Set Back

So, I've talked a bit here about how I was put on nausea medication to help deal with the morning sickness I've been experiencing with this pregnancy. My family doctor originally prescribed it, with the plan of trying to wean myself off it at the end of the first trimester which is when morning sickness usually winds down in most pregnancies.

I was determined not to be on medication for the whole pregnancy so I was totally on board with weaning myself off. Originally I was taking for pills a day, so I cut out one at a time. About a month ago I stopped taking them altogether. For the first few days I felt pretty good and was really happy with my decision.

After a few days, however, things changed. All the gagging I was experiencing at the beginning of the pregnancy came back, full force. I started to have trouble eating again and began to get concerned about my weight. Nick and I sat down and talked it over one night and we decided that it would be best if I went back on the medication. When I had seen the OB I told her I was trying to cut back and she was pleased with that. But she also offered me a repeat prescription in case that didn't work, so I knew she would be OK with me starting it up again. I've seen her since I made the decision and I was definitely right about that.

So I've been back on the medication for nearly two weeks, but only twice a day. For the most part that's working well. I had a rough night last night, but there were a combination of factors at play there. 1) I was watching a documentary on TLC about a little girl born with a disfigured face. It was showing a lot of surgery and "medical" stuff that was pretty nauseating. 2) We didn't have much milk so I had decided to forego my nightly bowl of cereal in favour of a mug of hot chocolate accompanied by a Toblerone bar (very small one). Probably not a good choice. I ended up taking a double dose before bed because I had a huge bout of nausea from walking upstairs to bed.

I really didn't experience this with my pregnancy with Darcy at all. It's really frustrating. It looks like I'll be on the medication for a while!

For Auntie Stef

Auntie Stef isn't coming for Easter this year and has requested some up-to-date pictures of Darcy. Well, here you go. She was in a goofy mood this afternoon and actually stood still long enough to let me take a few pictures.

OK, Mommy, I'm done with the pictures now!

A Fair Point

I took Darcy to a baby shower for her babysitter's daughter on Monday night (the daughter is having the baby, not the babysitter). She had been hearing BA and I talking about this shower for weeks, so when the night rolled around she was pretty excited about going.

She was really good at the shower itself, but it started getting late so I decided to take her home. We had one last potty stop before heading out, so while she was "getting down to business" I asked her if she had fun at Renee's shower. Her response makes perfect sense for a 2 1/2-year old.

"Renee can't have a shower because there's no bathtub."

Ultra Sound #2

Warning: Very long, ranting post ahead!

The post is now amended to have the picture attached. I think this is clearer than the last one. If you're still having trouble seeing the baby in this one, let me know.

Aside from having the world's worst ultra sound tech, everything went well. As you know, I've been concerned about my lack of weight gain and the fact that I'm 18 weeks pregnant and still not obviously pregnant to the casual observer. I thought maybe there was something wrong and that the baby wasn't developing on schedule.

Well, by my calculations I was 18 weeks and 2 days pregnant yesterday. According to the ultra sound the baby is measuring 18 weeks, 1 day. You can't get much better than that! Everything seems to be as it should be. We were even able to see the baby's tongue wiggling around inside the mouth. That was amazing.

The tech however was not so amazing. My appointment was at 3:30. I had consumed insane amounts of water in preparation for the test, and was starting to be very uncomfortable. The tech didn't come get me until 3:40 and then when we got into the exam room, she didn't have all the files she needed, so she wasted more time by going to get those.

They usually do the exam in two parts, one with just me in the room and they call Nick in for the second. I had four ultra sounds with Darcy and one so far with this pregnancy. At each of those appointments I have been able to look at the screen right from the start and see the baby. Yesterday the tech turned the screen away from me. The only time I've heard of this happening is when there's something wrong with the baby. I was already going into the exam with the mindset that something could be wrong, so this freaked me out! She also didn't say a word to me through this whole process which seemed scary too.

After the first part they let you go to the bathroom. At every other ultra sound this is when they've called Nick in to join us. Before sending me to the bathroom she asked me if I had anyone there with me and I told her I did. When I came back, there was no Nick. I asked her what the deal was and she said that she was just getting started and he would be called in later. I had already been there for half an hour and that's usually how long the whole thing takes.

All in all, we were there for an hour. She finally called Nick in at 4:15, pretty much after he'd given up hope of ever getting to see anything. Once Nick was in the room she got all animated and told us how healthy the baby was, how active, blah blah blah. At 4:25 (I had told the babysitter I would pick Darcy up by 4:30 and was a half hour drive away) she finished up but told us to wait around while she checked to see if she had everything she needed. Another 5 minutes go by and she returns to tell us everything is fine.

The one day the babysitter has ever asked us to pick up Darcy early and I get stuck with the ultra sound technician who doesn't know what she's doing! Needless to say I was very late getting Darcy, but there was another Mom getting there at the same time so I didn't feel quite so badly about it. Of course I got every red light between downtown and the babysitter's house, and got stuck behind both a city bus and a school bus at different times on the drive out there too, which had made me even later. I wasn't at all stressed by the time I got there...

It was an incredibly frustrating day, but really in the end it was worth it all because we found out the baby is healthy and growing well.

Sunday Update

First of all, I want to say congratulations to my cousin Glenn and the rest of his band, downhere, on winning another Juno yesterday. That's really amazing! They won (I think it's their second win in this category) for Contemporary Christian/ Gospel Album of the Year.

Secondly, at church this morning a woman gave me a parcel that contained two gifts in it, one for Darcy, one for the new baby. I was opening the one for the new baby at lunch time and there was a lot of great stuff in it. Washcloths, bibs, towels, good necessity items that need replenishing for the second child. There was also a sweet little stuffed duck included for the new baby. This is Darcy's first experience with a gift being given for the baby (she hadn't opened her gift yet). When she saw the cute little duck she said, "Are there ducks in there for all of us?" She was a little disappointed when I said no.

She was pretty appeased when the time came to open her own gift and she found a couple of colouring books, some cool multi-coloured crayons and a lollipop!

Also, last week Darcy had one accident at the babysitter's on Monday, but was perfect the rest of the week. Maybe she has a bit of trouble settling in on Monday after a weekend at home, but once she's in the routine she's OK. We'll see how tomorrow goes.