Goodbye, Weekend. Hello, Monday

Hello!  Missed me?  Probably not, but that's ok.

Thanksgiving weekend was grand.  Jenny took the train down Wednesday afternoon, set to arrive just before D's bedtime.  We decided to keep him up to get to see her, and better yet, take him along to greet her at the train station.  A few minutes before leaving I said, "Donovan, we're going to see Aunt Jenny!"  And I kid you not, he goes, "Jenny?  Jenny?  Jenny!!" and started running around the house chanting "Jenny! Jenny!" all excited, then went to grab for his shoes so we could go get Aunt Jenny already!!  I wondered if he really knew what he was getting excited about, especially since it's been about 2 months now since he's actually seen Aunt Jenny, so I showed him a picture and he points, smiles, and says "Jenny!!"

Talk about major SWOON.

(BTW Criss don't feel bad, I'm guessing he'll be just as excited about seeing you at Christmas... especially if I remind him about the Cheetos)

Of course, we got to the station and by then he was so excited about the actual TRAINS!!! that Aunt Jenny wasn't quite as exciting anymore.

Thursday we headed over to Benjamin & Karen's home, since they graciously invited us to share their Thanksgiving meal with their family.  Everything was delicious, I wish I could've eaten three servings of everything.  D I think picked at some of the ham, maybe tried a bite of turkey... and scarfed down the flourless chocolate cake.  I was surprised, too, since it was kind of bittersweet, but he could.not.get.enough.  I guess the boy does not discriminate when it comes to chocolate.  Amazingly, Cannon also sat in his exersaucer completely entertained as we ate.  That baby is so happy and chill.  (See my pictures here, and a few more of Ben's here)

"Dinner" took place in the early afternoon, so then after there was much time for football watching and drowsiness.  Zach and Jen watched the Texas game (D drifted in and out), and I managed to finish my NaNoWriMo novel.  Wheeee!  =)  Didn't really expect that to happen when I started out.  ; )

Friday we had talked of heading out to Big Basin, but the weather turned gloomy so we decided to stick closer to home incase we got rained out.  So we went to Deer Hollow Farm where D discovered his love of pigs.  Seriously, he was entranced by the pigs, and kept saying "Pig! Pig! Pig!" over and over again.  Which prompted Zach to make many jokes about pigs, those magical animals that give us such varied and delicious foods.  We did start getting drizzled on as we walked back to the car, but no biggie.

Saturday we all went up to San Francisco to enjoy a bit more time together and save Jenny from a long commute back on the train.  The weather was gorgeous, if a bit windy, so we hung out at the beach for a while, had lunch at the Beach Chalet (something Zach's always wanted to do) then walked around the Legion of Honor. By then D was getting a little cranky, though he still had fun rolling his toy car down a hill.

Loving that we still had one more free day to our weekend, we spent Sunday doing some of our usual routines like walking to the farmer's market in the morning.  D had a pretty great day, seemed in good spirits and all... then woke up crying about 2hrs after going to bed.  I got him back to sleep, noticing he felt pretty hot but thought maybe it was just from being too bundled up while sleeping.  He woke up again half an hour later, still felt hot, so I took his temperature-- 103.  Yikes.  This was at about 10pm, I think.  I gave him Motrin, tried to get him to go back to sleep, didn't work, let him play a bit, and we finally both got back to bed by, oh, about 2am or so?  I think Zach then got up with him again at 3:30.  It's amazing he (meaning D) was as chipper as he was when he woke up this morning.

His fever was lower this morning (101) though climbing back up again.  He seemed to be acting fine early this morning, but then started being clingy and just wanted me to hold him.  I tried getting him to fall asleep several times as he looked so tired, and he'd sleep for a few minutes, but then always wake right back up again.  I finally got him down for a nap about half an hour ago, and hoping he sleeps for a while to catch up on some rest.  So far he doesn't have any other symptoms other than the slightest bit of a runny nose, though I've mainly noticed that after he's been crying so it could just be from that... but it kinda scares me a bit, since if he had major snot or something else that was obvious I'd know what to chalk it up to.  A fever w/o anything else along with it could mean all sorts of other (scary) things.  But, he hasn't yet had it long enough, or high enough, to need to do much about it yet.  I haven't given him any more Motrin since last night since I want his body to be able to fight off whatever he's got, and it seems the fever itself helps with that.

So, we'll see.  The weekend was great!  Monday?  Not so much.

give thanks

Just a few things I'm thankful for today:

• My loving,supportive hubby, who has been getting up at 4:30 am with the kiddo the past week or so to let me sleep in, and hardly ever complains about it.
• Our son, who is healthy, happy, agile, bright, wonderful, adorable, and so many other wonderful things.
• The food in our fridge, the clean water that runs from our tap, and not having to ever worry about the lack of either. 
• Technology. Our laptop, my beloved iPod Touch, my connections to a world lovely people far and near who have provided love and support when it's been needed the most.
• Dear friends, who invite us for festive dinners, who don't mind us dropping by unannounced, who share in our everyday ups and downs and life with kids.
• Family: my sister Jenny who is close enough to come down for Thanksgiving weekend; family in Texas who anxiously await our next trip home.  Grandparents for Donovan who in the past 2 years have flown more miles than I can count just to be nearby and help us out, and who are so actively, lovingly involved in his life.  
• Zach's job-- the luxury of having one to whine and complain about.  
• Nev and Sierra, our wonderful kitties whose furry wonderfulness make our lives better.  
• And, of course... pumpkin pie.  ; )

Wordless Wednesday: brown eyed boy

my muse, my challenge

You know, despite having some severe apprehensions, there are times when I do look forward to having another baby eventually.  For example, I was just thinking how nice it will be to have an immobile photographic model once again.  We bought our digital SLR camera just a few months before D was born, and he was my main subject for a long time.  He fascilitated my love affair with my 50mm lens, because he was a great subject for it.  I could shoot "wide open" and, because he didn't move much (at least for a while), it was relatively easy for me to get gorgeous results with fairly accurate focusing at even very shallow depths of focus.  Over these past two years I have found that I definitely gravitate much more towards this style of photography, with its delicious blurriness and infinite loveliness, and D has played a big part in me figuring that out.  (Also, Zach gets quite a bit of credit for buying our little "nifty fifty" to begin with, which is the lens with which I take the vast majority of my pictures and tend to feel the most creative).

And we had a blissful six months of immobile picture-taking joy.  Then he started scooting, and that was a slight challenge, but not too bad.  Crawling came next, and then walking, and suddenly pictures started getting quite a bit tougher to capture.  It's helped me improve on my ability to switch focus points faster, but mostly it's just tough to take good pictures of him.

And now?  Well.  Now he's figured out that there's a little screen on the back of the camera that shows him pictures.  And he is OBSESSED with looking through pictures (and videos) of himself and other family members.  He could literally sit at the computer for a good hour or longer just cycling through photo slide shows or home videos.  It's kinda scary.  Then as of this week anytime I pull out either my small point-and-shoot camera or the SLR he stops whatever he's doing, runs to the camera, and starts saying "Watch! Watch!" over and over, because he wants to see pictures on the playback screen.

*Sigh* Oh well.  As long as I'm able to get a good one of him every once in a while I suppose I'll be ok...

Small World

I signed up for Sew Liberated's Holiday Traditions Exchange this year.  I remembered her doing this last year, and when she announced it this year I lamented not being able to join since I don't crochet or knit or sew or do any of those other hands-on "handmade" craft ideas that came to mind.  And then I slapped myself on the head and said, "Um, did I not have an Etsy shop for most of this year??? DUH." So I signed up and am very excited to send some [left blank since partner might read this] along with the shared tradition and holiday recipe.  =)

But the funny thing that I wanted to share is, that the lady I got partnered up with happens to live in the bay area and work at a Montessori school that I visited while going through my training and that I would basically sell my left kidney to have D go to because it is not only an excellent Montessori program (complete with programs for art, music, cooking, etc; pre-K through middle school) but also offer language-immersion in both Spanish and French.  So, not only is it nice to meet another fellow Montessorian who lives in the area, but it's also nice to have another connection in case I decide to spend my days driving up and down the bay after all when D's ready to start preschool.  ; )

In other news, my friend Kathy has been doing monthly give-aways on her blog to help promote her book, Dirt & Sunshine (which I've already praised here), and I was the lucky winner of November's giveaway!  Which is awesome because I really wanted this particular set of prizes for the kiddie cooking utensils, since I want to get D a little kitchen for his birthday in a couple months (!!!! that soon already!!!!).  As part of the giveaway I received a pound of this amazing cinnamon, which is way more than I could ever use, and I'm planning to give some away as gifts to family, but if any of you would like a small packet of it let me know and  I'll give/send some to you.  Leave me a comment or email me at mightymarce at gmail dot com.

boobs & swine

Today has not been the best of days.  Part of the problem has been the change in mammography recommendations for women that was announced a few days ago (here's a pretty good article talking about the new recs and the controversy surrounding them).  For some reason this is weighing heavily on my mind... well, ok, maybe because I disgree with it or at least feel pretty worried about it (huh, kind of ironic...).  It seems a lot of the reasoning behind it is that for those women with slow-growing cancers, they'll have plenty of time to catch it by other means before it's too late, but women who happen to have fast-growing, aggressive ones... well, it's like they're saying "we're not very good at catching those and so we're just not really gonna bother, it's not worth it for us."  Which kinda feels like shit.

Zach instead feels it's a perfectly reasonable recommendation, that mammograms aren't that good at catching cancers anyway, and that this is a good way to lower health care costs.  We seem to be having trouble discussing this issue in a civil manner.

So last night we had a big fight about it, which left me in a complete and total funk all morning.  So D got to watch a lot of the Mighty Machines videos on the computer.  I really needed the break.

Things got better in the afternoon-- it helped a lot that I got a call from my doctor's office (Kaiser Permanente, by the way) to alert me that they'd (finally!) received a new shipment of the H1N1 vaccine for young children and that I could come in today to get D his shot.  I have to say I'm very impressed that they took the time to call their patients.  So after D's nap we went in, and I was afraid it would be an utter madhouse, but the wait was short and the whole thing pretty easy.  Except for the shot itself-- D is quickly recognizing the room where they give the shots and started crying even before the nurse got the syringe out.  But he's seemed ok all the rest of today.

So that's one big check-mark off our to-do list.  We'll see if they still have any left in a month when he needs the booster, but they also said this first dose gives 80-90% of the protection so if we don't get it for a while I'm not too worried.

And now it's Friday night and I'm up waiting for Zach to get home (went to a networking thing), and at least tomorrow's the weekend. And next week is Thanksgiving, which means a few extra days off (for him) and time with Jenny, who'll come down for a few days to eat turkey with us.  Looking forward to that.

Backwards (on extended rear-facing)

We've been keeping Donovan's car seat rear-facing so far.  After reading up on how much safer it is, it became clear to both Zach and I that we really wanted to make sure D stayed rear-facing till he was at least 2yrs old, if not longer.

Over the past couple months I've noticed a funny thing.  We have a surprisingly high number of kids about D's age on our street that we've met recently, and I started looking at their cars and noticing that they all had their kids facing forwards.  And I'd see other kids about his age elsewhere, and notice them facing forwards.  Combine this with the fact that it's been getting a bit more tricky to get him into the car seat when facing backwards (and that he's started using the seat in front of him to push off when he doesn't want to be buckled in), and I've started thinking maybe we'd turn him around at his second birthday (February).

It's scary how easy it is to succumb to what "everyone else is doing."

Last night I mentioned to Zach how I was thinking we could turn him around at his birthday.  He did not agree.  So I did some more research (um, a 2 minute google search) and quickly found several sources, including the AAP, all strongly suggesting keeping young children rear-facing as long as possible (a few even addressing the rumor that extended rear-facing will mean higher risk of breaking a child's legs in a crash-- apparently there are no documented cases of this happening, ever).  I even found a photo gallery of kids 1-2 years and older in their rear-facing car seats.  I think it's what I needed to strengthen my resolve.

Luckily, D's car seat is big enough so he has plenty of room still.  His feet are touching the seat in front of him now, but he doesn't look uncomfortable at all.  He's WAY under the weight limit (he's 25lb, the limit on his seat is 35lb) and he still has plenty of room height-wise, too.

So, yeah.  I think we're gonna keep on keepin' on with the rear-facing.

Wordless Wednesday: brushing teeth

A Day In France (sort of)

Saturday morning we headed over to a French Festival Zach had heard about.  It turned out to be mainly a big room full of people selling their French-themed homemade crafts, though they also had a crepes stand outside, a French story hour for the young kiddoes (hosted by Les Petits Livres, a netflix-like way to borrow French kid's books, absolutely brilliant if you ask me), and a dance recital.  In which they had a bunch of young girls dance the can can.  Not sure that was *entirely* appropriate, but oh well.  

The best part of it all was that apparently the entire local French community came out for this event, so we were hearing French spoken everywhere.  I swear 75% of those in attendance were French-speaking.  It's been over a year since we've been surrounded by that much French, and I must say it made me very homesick for Switzerland (can you be homesick for a place that wasn't really "home" to begin with? But you get what I mean).  

I saw tons of adorable crafts for sale, but the only thing we bought were some cards and a sampler set of macarons parisiennes from the Fleur de Cocoa stand.  I ate them all in one sitting yesterday, and let me tell you they were INCREDIBLE.  I'm honestly trying to remember if I ever had macarons that good while in Europe, which says something.  I think we'll have to make our way over to Los Gatos sometime to indulge in some more of their deliciousness.

six word sunday: Peace, calm, quiet... finally some rest.

six word sunday challenge

After 2-3 weeks of VERY early wake-ups, D seems to be "sleeping in" till 6am again.  He's still waking up at night some (1-3 times on avg), but now also goes back to sleep quickly (instead of needing one of us to sit with him for over an hour).  I can feel my sanity slowly returning.  Sleep makes ALL the difference...

nature basket

I recently came across a post on Sew Liberated (one of my favorite blogs- she makes me wish I were more crafty) about making a nature corner for her son.  I thought this was a great idea, to bring a bit of nature indoors.  The idea is to choose a few season-themed items from the outdoors and have a space inside to display them and get to talk about them with your kids, and then you can change the items depending on the season and weather.  However we don't really have a good spot for a permanent nature corner, nor is D quite old enough or disciplined enough to be trusted with object left on a table for him (they'd be strewn all over the house within about 5 minutes).  Remembering a small basket I knew I had somewhere, I figured I could make up a small nature basket for him, and I just so happened to have a couple pine cones (brought home from previous nature hikes), a miniature pumpkin that I bought for decoration before Halloween, and lemons from our tree just lying around.  I then grabbed a leaf that had fallen from the tree in our front yard, and voila!  We have a nature basket!

I called D to sit with me at his table and we looked at the items in the basket and talked about them some.  He really liked the lemon (he's played with our lemons before, we usually have an open container with a bunch of them lying around), and also the pumpkin and pinecones.  His interest lasted for just a couple minutes, about what I expected.  I'm keeping the basket up and away most of the time, and hopefully every so often as I remember we'll bring it out and talk about it again.  Then maybe when we're out on walks in the neighborhood or the park we can look for and bring home new items to add to our basket.  

Wordless Wednesday: I could seriously eat him up sometimes

travel/cloth/writing/potties

Zach left this morning for a conference in LA, will be back tomorrow night-- at midnight.  Which means I'm solo parenting it for 2 days.  Tonight wasn't too bad, hopefully tomorrow will be the same.  We met up with Debbie and lil Maddie at the park this afternoon.  It was fun to catch up, especially since we actually were able to semi sort of hold a conversation, even if I did have to cajole D into staying inside the playground gate every 10 minutes ("Hey D, where are your trucks?  Trucks!  Go find your trucks! They're WAY cooler than going exploring the whole rest of the park! Please?").

I received an Etsy package today, always very exciting.  Last week I purchased a set of 10 cloth dinner napkins, and three cloth snack bags, from Evelyn Fields. I'm hoping to make a transition to using mostly/all cloth instead of paper napkins and paper towels.  We'll see how it goes, as Zach's not terribly supportive.  But I think I just need to figure out a good system for storing the dirty towels and then wash them all together on hot at the end of the week and hopefully he then can't complain about it.  ; )  I'm curious to see how the snack bags go, they seem a great replacement for ziploc baggies and are beyond adorable.

Last night I snuck off to a local write-in for NaNoWriMo, and over those 2.5 hours I wrote 4,500 words.  I've got a 2-3 day lead right now, which is nice.  Which is why I'm allowing myself to write this post before getting my daily NaNo writing done.  I think my main goal for tonight will be to plot out what I want to happen in the rest of the novel-- I've been literally making it up as I go so far which is ok, but I think I could benefit from having a bit more forethought into the scenes I want to write.

Also, I'm starting to gather as much info as I can about potty training (or "toilet learning" as I guess the term is these days).  D turns two in February, and I think it's about time to get a bit more serious about it.  Part of me wants to just go for it some weekend coming up, but since we'll be going to Texas for 2 weeks in December (for Christmas) it would probably be best to wait till the new year when we won't have any trips or other upheavals planned for a while. But, I would love to hear your stories/experiences/advice about potty training, either by leaving a comment or emailing me at mightymarce at gmail dot com.

six word sunday: Boy playing happily; cat plotting suspiciously

six word sunday challenge

thoughts on family expansions

Soon after Zach and I got married we sat down and talked about when we wanted to have kids.  We discussed various potential plans and how kids would get in the way of them, but we were both set of having a family and so decided to just set a date and stick to it.  A kid will be inconvenient no matter how you time things, so might as well just pick a timeline and work the rest of life around it.

Soon after we had Donovan we started tentatively talking about when to plan for a sibling for him.  He have a "date" so far but it's much less strict of a timeline.  Every once in a while Zach will come home and start making comments about how nice it would be for D to have a sibling already so they could play together, how maybe we should go ahead and have a baby sooner.  The other night he was even trying to teach D how to say "I want a baby."

I then remind Zach if how much f*cking work newborns are, and he goes, "Oh, yeah.  Right.  Maybe we should wait a bit longer..."

Truth is, I'm terrified of having another kid.  But having only one is not really an option that's ok for either of us. I love having my big family and desperately want D to have at least one sibling to play with as he grows up, and to have those shared memories and experiences of our family when he's older.  I also think to the future, when whatever kids we have are all grown up, and what our current reunions are with all the people and activity and chaos, and thinking about holidays where you have a single child (and his potential family) to come over seems... lonely.  In the past I'd always wanted to have lots of kids, thinking of how great it'd be when they were older.  And part of me still wants that, it's just I'm not sure I could survive past the early years.

I've often read articles or blog posts of parents who worried that they wouldn't be able to love their 2nd (or 3rd, etc) child as much as their existing one(s), that they couldn't possibly have enough room in their hearts to let more children in.  I have no fear of that-- I know love is limitless and endless and that I will love any and all children I have deeply.  What I do worry about, though, is whether I have enough energy (and sanity) for another kid.  I often feel like I'm barely holding it together with one kid as it is, and it seems that these days one needs to have superhuman levels of patience and restraint in order to hold up to even basic standards for what makes A Good Mother.  I know this is probably not the best time for me to fret about all this since we've been having a rough few weeks over here-- D hasn't been sleeping well at all and we've been having to get up with him at least once a night, often for a good hour or more, plus very early mornings, making us all a bit grumpy.  I may not be in the most positive frame of mind right now.  But a newborn would mean, among other things, signing on for another year+ of nonexistent sleep, so it's not like I'll magically feel all well-rested and radiant, seeing sunshine and roses everywhere I go (I know we could possibly end up with a baby who sleeps better than D did, but it's also just as likely we could end up with far worse).

I realize it's silly, but part of me still feels like I must be a terrible person/mom for not being excited about another baby, for actively dreading going through that first year all over again.  The crazy thing is, I've always thought of myself as a fairly optimistic person, and I don't think D has been abnormally difficult as a kid... so why has it felt so hard?  Am I focusing too much on the negatives?  Am I having a week+ long funk that colors everything negatively?  Am I missing some sort of motherhood-is-wonderful gene?  Or is this how most parents feel and they just don't talk about it?

Bottom line is, we want another kid in the end-- we will not be satisfied as a family of 3. And so I suppose that at some point we'll just suck it up and take the plunge.

Day Five

So it's Day Five of NaNoWriMo, and so far I'm kinda kicking butt.

Last month I mentioned how I signed up to try to write a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November.  I was a bit worried about how attainable this might actually be.  Thankfully, D has been cooperative enough so far,  so that between playing independently some in the morning and taking decent naps (other than yesterday and today) I've been able to more than meet my daily word counts.  In order to write 50,000 words in 30 days you have to write a minimum of 1,667 words each day, and so by day 5 you should have a total of at least 8,335 words to be on track.  As of tonight I'm up to 11,905.  WOOT!

Luckily years of daily blogging seems to have made me a speedy typist, which is probably the sole reason I'm this far ahead.  I timed myself tonight and was able to crank out 1,330 words in 30 minutes, or about 45 words/minute.  I've never timed myself typing before, so that's fun to know.  Also luckily, ideas have been coming quickly enough as well.  One key piece of advice that's constantly thrown around during NaNoWriMo is that you need to "kill your inner editor" (at least during the month of November) since it's pretty darn near impossible to get out 50,000 words in a month if you're also stressing about making them a decent gathering of words that actually make coherent sense let alone be interesting and intelligent.  As a very novice writer, I don't think I've yet developed that inner critic nor a good sense of what's "good" writing vs what's "utter crap" writing and so I'm more free to just put stuff out on the page and see what happens.  I'm still discovering if this is something that might become a long-term hobby or just a one-time try.  I'm also still discovering what kind of novel I'm trying to write, whether it will be a one-piece novel or if I'll need to add more stories along with it to complete the 50k goal, and if any of the subplots I'm considering will materialize into anything.  I hardly did any outlining or planning before November 1, so it's been interesting to literally just go day by day as far as what I think I'll write, with little more than  vague idea as to the general storyline.  I'm figuring out things I'm good at, and all the other things that I didn't even think about and have trouble with (like actually defining my characters and giving them history, past experiences, etc).

At least I have my chanchito and plot ninjas to help me figure it all out.  ;)

Motherhood: no matter what, UR DOIN IT WRONG

I've been noticing lately how I've become more self-assured over time, and care less about what others think of me or the things I do.  I still care some, of course, and always will-- but I'm not letting other people's (usually strangers anyway) potential negative reactions affect my actions as much as I once did.  I imagine some of this is due to the natural process of getting older and more mature... but I also think that a lot of it is a result of becoming a mother.

See, it turns out that moms are judged constantly (I know, who knew??).  All mothers are terrible mothers, to different groups of people.  If you stay at home, you're teaching your children that women are incapable of supporting themselves in the world; if you work, you are abandoning your children and letting their younger years pass you by.  If you let your child "cry it out" to learn to sleep better you're teaching them that the world is a cruel, awful place where they can't even trust their own parents; if you instead go to them at night every time they call and allow them to sleep through the night on their own terms, you are coddling them and will end up with a needy 15 yr old who still needs Mommy to rub his back to fall asleep.  If you spank you are a child abuser; if you don't you're raising spoiled brats who will never learn rules or discipline.

It doesn't matter if you read to your kid five times a day, or sing them songs, or play games with them, or take them to all their doctors visits, or sit with them for as many hours as they need in the middle of the night when they're sick, or that you love them more than anything else in the world and would do anything for them.  No, because of whatever specific actions deemed UNFORGIVEABLE by whichever specific group at the time, you have been deemed a BAD MOTHER.  End of story.

In other words, no matter what, UR DOIN IT WRONG.

As a result, mothers have two choices: either fall endlessly into deep pit of despair and guilt, constantly questioning your choices and motives to the point of crippling your very ability to make a decision; or grow thicker skin and the confidence to know that you are doing what's best for your kids based on the best of your abilities and current knowledge.  Every so often I find myself gravitating towards the former, but for the most part I think I'm managing to do an ok job of tuning out the judgement.

An interesting side effect is that I have become much more open-minded about different parenting styles and techniques.  I am not perfect by any means and still find myself criticizing other parents from time to time, but usually manage to stop myself mid-thought and remember that I don't know their situation or their motives.  Because motherhood and parenting are not one-size-fits-all, and there seem to be about as many "right" ways to do something, depending on what kind of kid you have, as there are stars in the sky.

paradoxical

So this morning D and I went to the park, and while there I saw a woman whom I vaguely recognized, but knew I must know since she recognized D immediately.  She asked how old he is now, then followed up with, "Are you pregnant again?"

Um, no.

Then this afternoon the Brazilian family from down the street came by (the daughter, her brother, and the grandmother).  The grandmother was talking with me and mentioned (as she has a few other times) how skinny I am.  And she doesn't say anything negative about it, but I get the sense she doesn't mean it as a compliment.  (particularly since she then followed it up a few minutes later by mentioning how much she likes Zach's mom partially because she is on the heavy side).

So I apparently look like a too-skinny pregnant woman today.  Go figure.

In other news, D continues to be a sleep-less grumpy puss.  I realized today that it's been a good 2 and a half weeks since he got this chest cold or whatever the hell it is, and perhaps we should get him checked out.  He's had a couple days of runny nose, but most days he seems fine... except for this random, on/off coughing that sounds like he has some major congestion down in his chest.  And the fact that his sleep has gone to pot due to the combination of cough and nasal congestion that comes on overnight.  (No fever at any point, though).

It started a few days before we left for Texas.  We were in Texas for about 10 days, and I think he slept through the night only 3 of those nights-- the others he'd wake up at least once overnight, congested and upset, demanding Mommy and no one else.  It's gotten slightly better since we got back, but he's still getting up a lot and taking a while to get back to sleep sometimes (last night I spent over 1.5hrs laying next to him in his bed waiting for him to fall back asleep... if I tried getting up he just screamed).  His mattress is elevated, we have a humidifier going in his room all night long...  and yeah.  It kinda sucks.  It means neither of us three are sleeping properly, making us all crankier and grumpier than is helpful for dealing with anything else.

So tomorrow we'll go see his pediatrician and I guess she'll check to make sure there's nothing else wrong with him, and unfortunately probably not have much else to offer and so I'm crossing my fingers that it all goes away on its own soon.  I just realized he may just have seasonal allergies, in which case just shoot me now.

six word sunday: CANDY CANDY CANDY NOM NOM NOM

six word sunday challenge

More Halloween pictures here.