The Readiness Is All

3 Months today! A few things about this sweet little missy this month:

• She had her first long road trip (twelve hours each way to Tucson to see Great-Grandma Long for Thanksgiving) and she was and EXCELLENT little traveler. She slept a lot, saved her blowouts for times when we weren't in the car, fell asleep in my arms when we were visiting relatives, and generally was a very pleasant little companion. CB did great as well, and I think it was nice for them to have each other in the back seat this time. 
• She has finally overcome her hatred of baths, and now generally seems to like them (or at least not scream through them).
• She had her first giggle a few days ago when I was holding her on my lap while we watched Muppet Christmas Carol. I was blowing zerbits with my lips and tickling her, and we got a little chortle out of her. She's also given one to Daddy and to my mom, but they're still pretty hard to earn. 
• She completely lights up when she's been just chilling on her own and one of us comes over to talk to her. She loves looking at a smiling face and almost always rewards us with a smile now. 
• Unlike CB, who was pretty much sleeping 10 hours at a stretch by now and had a pretty firm schedule, Miss D is still waking up to nurse around 4 am, and then she sometimes gets a little offended when I try to kick her back out of the bed to the cold and lonely pack and play. However, she's still rather easy at night, so I can't complain about her being slightly less magical at sleeping at night than CB was, especially since it's probably partially because I haven't pushed much of a schedule at all during the day yet. She's much easier about just sleeping whenever than CB was, so I'm just going with it as long as I can. This time around I know that there will probably be several periods of sleep training/retraining, etc. and I can't bring myself to get too worked up about it this early when she's been such a peach. 
• Just a few days after she turned two months, she shocked us all by rolling over from her tummy to her back, and then doing it over and over again. CB was nearly 4 months old before she attempted it at all, and was over four months old by the time she mastered it, so it was crazy to have my two month old do it so easily. Of course, she'd already not been getting too much tummy time, and now she barely gets any because she just flips right over when I put her there. 
• She still likes a pacifier, which I'm enjoying. 
• She adores and is adored by her sister, who loves coming and talking to her and giving her pony rides (with Daddy holding Miss D on her back while CB neighs on all fours). When we asked CB what was special to her, she said, "D is special to me!" And when Christmas presents started appearing under the tree, first CB found on of hers, and then she found on and said, "This one for D!" She is always so concerned that her baby sister be involved and included (except for the times when she wants her to be put down so that Mommy or Daddy can play with her - which are natural.) I'm grateful for the level of love that already exists between them. Miss D loves to have CB come and talk to her and make faces at her, and she watches her all the time. I just know they're going to be the cutest little partners in crime. 
• She seems much calmer to me than CB ever was. She's certainly less of a spitter and less refluxy, but just generally she seems more chill and less intense - but certainly no less sweet. 

A few things about Miss D at 2 months:

• As of her 2 month appointment, she was 11 pounds 8.5 oz and 24 inches long, so she's 70th percentile for weight and a whopping 96th for height. Looks like the tradition of having long Long girls continues. 
• Last night she slept from 11 until 6, and then went back to sleep for a couple more hours. She might be less consistent than CB was at this age for sleeping, but she always goes back to sleep right after she nurses and usually sleeps at least 5-7 hours at a time at night. 
• Is still quite sleepy during the day - more sleepy than I remember CB being. On the one hand this is really nice, because it's given CB more time to adjust. On the other hand, I feel like I still don't know her very well because she sleeps a LOT. She has been starting to smile at us for the last month, but I have to work harder for her smiles than I did for CB.
• She was blessed on Nov. 2, and she was beautiful and slept most of the way through the blessing itself, which meant she was nice and quiet for it. :) All of her cousins came and we didn't see CB through all of sacrament meeting because she was playing with them, so we just got to snuggle Miss D and enjoy the day. 
• She loves driving in the car (or at least falls asleep or calmly looks around whenever we drive) and going for walks in our sit and stand stroller. 
• She has specific bounces that she likes from both me and Eric, and there are times that they are almost magical. 
• She likes a pacifier more than I remember CB liking on at this age, so maybe I'll get a pacifier baby this time.
• She loves attention from her sister as long as it doesn't involve being crushed or clawed by her (which sometimes happens even though the intentions are always loving. 

• I spent the first week or so of your life recovering from your intense arrival. My recovery has been more painful than it was with CB's, and your daddy has had to pick up a lot more of the work than he did with your sister. I'm pretty sure he's changed about 75% of your diapers so far. 
• You seem to me to be much sleepier than CB was, and even if that's just because I've forgotten, I feel like I've made much less of an effort to make sure you start conforming to some kind of schedule than I did with her. (Re: C-section recovery + toddler in the house). You pretty easily drift into your naps and have slept a LOT (probably in part because I was on lots of painkillers at first, but maybe not, since I didn't see a huge decrease after I went off them). In any case, I have been intensely grateful that you have been an easy baby so far, because I needed it. 
• Last Monday, the intense stomach pain I had during the last couple of months of my pregnancy with you (you know, the pain that was supposed to be cured when they delivered you because they decided it was HELLP syndrome all along) came back, and your dad and I took you with us to the ER while CB slept at home. They finally did an ultrasound on my gallbladder after absolutely everyone had speculated that it could be a problem, and wonder of wonders, it was full of gallstones. I went on a very strict diet (not fun for your nursing self) and scheduled surgery for Monday the 6th. And then later that day I tried to eat crackers and had another horrendous attack, plus I'd been throwing up Cream of Wheat for two days, so Thursday morning I went in for surgery and you and CB went to Mama and Papa's house. I didn't get to pump for you like I'd hoped, and the outpatient surgery that was supposed to have us home by about noon turned into a two day affair due to a gallstone in my bile duct, so you got to be in formula for a couple of days. Thank goodness you took a bottle willingly and went back to breastfeeding readily when we all got back home (although it wreaked havoc on your digestion for a day or two). So for at least half of your short life I've been recovering from a surgery, and thankfully, you've been a sleepy sweetie about the whole thing. 
• Your sister takes up a lot of my attention right now. She's a real force of nature at the moment, and she really loves you but really wants lots of attention as well. It's been interesting trying to figure out the balance, and I'm sure I'll struggle with that in the coming months. She always wants to hold you and is very concerned when you cry, but as soon as you are awake and not crying she says, "BABY HAPPY NOW??" and giggles and kisses on you. Whenever she wants to go and play in another room, she'll tell me to come on, but she also always tells you to come too. I hope you two will be best friends. 

See? This is what happens when we first unwrapped you, especially because you weren't wearing pants.

Okay. Time to finish this story.

At some point that morning (probably within 3-4 hours of the C section) someone came in and asked me if I wanted to try to breastfeed the baby. I was still in quite a bit of pain at this point, and I felt like I was just barely able to stay awake because of all of the painkillers I was on, and I just couldn't imagine doing it yet. I think I asked them if it would ruin anything if they gave her a bottle and I tried for the next one, and they said of course not and went and gave her some formula.

At about 10:00 my dad, who had stayed the night at our apartment and been there when CB woke up (her reaction to his being there was a very calm, "Hi Papa,")  brought CB over to see the baby, and this was by far the best part of the day. She walked in and after saying hi to us, Eric took her over to show her the new baby sister. She immediately said, "Hold her?" So Eric pulled the baby out of the bassinet and the two of them went over to the big chair in my room to sit together and hold the baby. CB was completely delighted with her, exclaiming over her tiny body parts ("Hands! Little ones!") and giving her kisses. I kind of liked that it was very similar to the way things went down on the new baby episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood that we'd watched about 10 times, because I felt like she was comforted by the fact that this was kind of what she expected.



All day I felt like I was fighting to stay awake or I was just zonked out. They gave me a button to push for pain medication, and I could push it every 10 minutes when I green indicator light came on. There was a steady drip of medication, but I could push it for an extra bump of it. I remember at one point the nurse said I had pushed it 17 times.

Eventually I felt like I had enough brain function firing that I felt like I could try to nurse my baby. Luckily, although I was still pretty out of it, a little instinct from last time kicked in, and D was as good at latching as her sister was and latched on pretty quickly. She nursed several times throughout the day despite my barely being able to stay awake while I was nursing her and my extreme difficulty moving her around to get her in the right position to nurse because of the pain in my stomach and weirdly, my shoulder. (Apparently whenever they open you up some oxygen can get in and air pockets settle somewhere and cause that kind of pain. Mine was in my shoulder and my right side, which is apparently really common, and for almost the entire first two days that was the worst of my pain unless I was trying to stand up.)

The rest of the story isn't very exciting - it involves lots of keeping track of how much both the baby and I were peeing, some very tentative times getting up to go into the bathroom and to get cleaned up, then some slightly less tentative times walking around the hospital halls v-e-r-y slowly. Meanwhile, we got decent sleep at night by sending D to the nursery except when she came in to feed at midnight, 3 or 4 and 7 or 8.

By Sunday I was feeling way better than I expected to feel (especially after the first day) and although I didn't feel better, I felt like I didn't really need to be in the hospital any more. Eric gets to take at least a week off work, and at this point he can do everything I need and he's cheaper than the hospital staff. Plus that hospital bed was miserable by the end, and all I wanted to do was get out of it. On top of that, we missed CB so much and couldn't wait to be home as a family. When the doctor came in to check on me Sunday morning, we asked how long we had to stay, and he said he didn't see any reason why we couldn't go home that day. D was doing so well that the pediatrician had said he would have sent her home Saturday if I could have gone, my incision looked good, and I was walking around reasonably well. We called the nurse and started talking to her about what had happened, and once I had lunch and D got her hearing re-tested (she'd failed the first one that happened really shortly after she was born, but she passed the second with flying colors - I think the same happened with CB) we did some last minute checks, got all of our prescriptions in order, loaded up and headed home. My parents brought CB back home a couple of hours later, and it felt really good to be together as a family in our own house. We spent some time settling in and figuring out where to put the baby until she's ready to go into the room the girls will share, we had some dinner, I spent lots of time lying down, and D spent lots of time sleeping.

When she is awake she makes awesome faces like this.

Well folks, just when I thought pregnancy was never going to end, our baby came - in a ridiculously dramatic and unexpected way. Fair warning: this is a birth story. If you don't like birth stories, don't read it. I personally love them and know I have friends who love them, so that's why I'm writing it here. Don't blame me if you are traumatized.

A couple of things first to provide context. First, you may recall that I mentioned a couple of times on this blog reasons I would consider having our next baby somewhere other than a hospital. After a lot of thought and research and prayer, we had decided to have our baby at a birthing center not too far from here, and we had done all of our prenatal care there. We loved the midwives, Clara loved going to listen to baby sister's heartbeat, and I was feeling mostly pretty calm about having a natural birth. (I had the occasional freak outs and wasn't really enjoying Hypnobabies, but overall I felt very calm about it and like it was a good decision for us.) We were considered good candidates for an out of hospital birth, we'd had an ultrasound at the hospital, the midwives were keeping a close eye on things like my blood pressure and urine and other things that indicate problems. The baby was head down and sitting low, and at 39 weeks I fully expected that we'd be having a baby at the birthing center any day. My main concern was making sure I got there in time, because CB's birth was very quick for a first time birth, and once the doctor broke my water I was ready to push in about two hours and she was out in three (which would have been sooner if I hadn't been waiting for the doctor to not get there in time to catch the head).

The other thing of note that had happened with this pregnancy (which had been really normal otherwise) was that sometime toward the end of July I started having this weird attacks that seemed like they might be gall bladder attacks or at least very severe intestinal distress. The first couple lasted for about 15 minutes and then subsided and were gone, but at the beginning of August, I had several back to back attacks, and they just wouldn't stop. I had horrible pain just under my sternum and my ribs that radiated around to my back. It was so bad it made me throw up (which actually made it feel better temporarily, but then the pain came back). We had called the midwives about this pain the first time it had happened, and they didn't have anything to tell us. Luckily, it had gone away about the time we called them, so we just didn't worry about it. This time we just went ahead and went to the hospital, and after some tests and poking and such, they gave me what they called a GI Cocktail (basically Maalox and Lidocaine) and said if that helped it was probably just some kind of intestinal inflammation. I felt better almost immediately, and although my tests had some slightly elevated numbers that indicated maybe gallbladder could be a thing, it wasn't bad enough for them to keep me there. They sent me home with instructions to avoid fried foods and to come back for a follow up test in two weeks. That test was totally normal, so we stopped worrying about it. The midwives recommended taking Magnesium, and that seemed to help the small episodes I'd still been having stop the rest of the way, so we were feeling good about everything.

This episode did make me freak out slightly about the birthing center (mostly because of the amount of pain I'd been in) but after talking to them and getting the test results back, I felt calm and decided to go ahead with my plans to have the baby there.

Fast forward to last Thursday night. I was more than 39 weeks pregnant and very ready to be done with pregnancy. We'd gone to dinner with my parents and my aunt, and at some point during the meal I began to wonder if the somewhat greasy Chinese food had been a mistake, because I was starting to have the stomach pain again after 3 weeks without it. It continued to get worse as we went home, and for the first time in a long time Eric put CB to bed without me while I sat very still and felt miserable. The pain wasn't going away, and when I called the midwives they said I should probably just go to the hospital and ask for the GI cocktail again and then have my gallbladder looked at after I had the baby. The one thing that was very clear to me was that I definitely did NOT want to be in labor while that pain was going on, and in fact I had a few Braxton-Hicks contractions which were EXCRUCIATING because everything in my stomach already felt horribly tight, and taking deep breaths was almost unbearable.

At about 10:30, we called our upstairs neighbors and asked if Brother Keeler would come down and help Eric give me a priesthood blessing. I was hoping it would just making the pain go away and I could just carry out my pregnancy in peace, but at one point in the blessing I was told that I would be blessed for the pain I experienced for my children (or something to that effect), and that the pain would be healed (but in a way that didn't sound like that meant immediately). I had told Eric that I just really didn't want to go to the hospital if I didn't have to, so before the blessing he said we should put a time limit on it and told me that in 20 minutes we would go. I was not in favor of this time limit, but about five minutes after the blessing I started directing him to things we needed and started preparing myself to go to the hospital. I told him I thought we should take the hospital bag just in case there was a reason we ended up having the baby that night, but not really expecting to. I just felt like the pain wasn't going to go away on it's own and like the hospital was the right decision.

So at about 11:15 we arrived at the hospital, where the same nurse was on the desk who had been there when we had gone in a month ago. She remembered us and got us set up with a nurse. They drew blood again and did some tests, but they also gave me the GI cocktail and told me as long as I wasn't super dilated I could probably just go home if the GI cocktail worked. I felt much better after I had it (although not quite as good as I'd felt the first time - after a few minutes I could feel some pain still there) and the nurse said I was only dilated to a three, so I could definitely go back home as soon as they got my labs back.

Then they got my labs back.

When I'd been to the hospital before, my liver enzyme numbers weren't supposed to be higher than a 40, and they were at a 48. Not a huge deal, but something they were keeping an eye on. They'd gone back to normal when I went in for the second test, so they'd decided I was fine. This time, they were at a 93. My platelet levels were also lower than they were supposed to be, meaning I had two out of the three symptoms for HELLP syndrome, a form of preeclampsia. (The third symptom is high blood pressure, which is also the most common symptom of preeclampsia, along with protein in the urine. I'd had fantastic blood pressure throughout the pregnancy and still did that night, so no one had really suspected that could be the problem.) HELLP syndrome can turn into something really serious in a hurry, and the cure for it is delivering the baby, so they told me that they needed to deliver the baby right away and they were going to induce that night.

So that was the first crazy thing that happened.

We made some phone calls - first one to my dad to ask him to come and stay with Clara and be there in the morning (our upstairs neighbors had the baby monitor and were listening for her so she could sleep, since we didn't anticipate we'd be gone more than a couple of hours and she almost never wakes up at night), then one to the midwives to tell them what was going on and ask them to send over my prenatal information from all of my checkups.

Next they took us to labor and delivery, where they got me on a pitocin drip and told us to get some rest. They would up the dose every half an hour, I could get an epidural whenever if I decided I wanted one, and when I was ready we'd have a baby. They also said the doctor would probably come and break my water at some point, and I told them about how that sent me into hard labor pretty quickly with Clara and I would probably want an epidural shortly after they broke my water if they went that route.

Me all ready to go

Me being not panicky

It turned out the doctor didn't want to wait that long at all for that part, so he came in to break my water about 20 minutes after I went on the pitocin drip. This was probably at about 1:45 am, which is important, because what happened next seemed very long to me but all happened very fast. The doctor broke my water, and it was uncomfortable, which I remembered from last time, but then he just kept messing around in there and it kept being really uncomfortable, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. At first I thought maybe it hadn't broken as much as he wanted it to and he was still trying to get it to break more, but then I heard him say something about the baby's hand and the cord, and how the cord was coming out and so was the hand and they were trying to push the cord back in, and meanwhile it felt like there was just a fist jamming into parts of my body that had already been quite sore for several weeks because of the pressure of walking around with a baby pressing down ready to be born. After what seemed like about 5 minutes of agony but which Eric says was more like a minute, the doctor said, "The cord is coming out first and we can't get it back in. There is only one safe way for this baby to be born now, and that's an emergency C section. We're going to go in there right now, and Dad, we're going to put her under general anesthesia, so you need to stay here." I honestly can't remember whether Eric and I said anything to each other at that point - I think we just said I love you to each other and he told me it would be okay. I also remember asking the doctor if the baby was okay, and he said she was fine but she needed to be born immediately.

What I found out later was that when they broke my water, my cervix went from a 3 to fully dilated in about 10 seconds. The water was gushing out, the baby's hand fell out and created an opening that allowed the cord to prolapse, and everything was gushing out so fast that they couldn't get the cord back in. The doctor said that if the cord hadn't prolapsed, he probably would have delivered the baby in about five minutes with little to no pushing on my part, and he said he had never seen anything like it in his life.

So the next thing we knew Eric was being left alone in the labor and delivery room where we expected to have the baby, and I was being rushed into a cold room with florescent lights (which, oddly enough, someone explained to me would be the case as they were pushing me down the hall, so apparently the bright lights are really scary and disorienting and they like to warn people about them). The doctor stopped trying to push the cord back in and was replaced by a nurse who was pushing the baby's head back in, which hurt SO BADLY. I was terrified, but mostly I just wanted the anesthesia to kick in so they would stop pushing so hard. Someone put oxygen over my mouth and nose and told me to try to breathe slowly, and it felt like it was taking forever for that part to end, but really it was only a couple of minutes, because Eric told me that in about five minutes they came to tell him to put on scrubs and go be with the baby. He said he got to see me for a minute and I was totally out and open, but the baby was screaming and purple. It was 2:04 am. While they spent the next 45 minutes sewing me up and cleaning me up and all of that good stuff, Eric went with the baby while she was weighed and immunized and washed and given all of those things they give babies when they're born (that gunk in their eyes, apgar scoring, etc. etc.) They even gave her a tiny IV so they could give her a bolus of fluids, and Eric said she went from kind of purple to totally pink and healthy-looking almost immediately.

Purple baby

Baby with an IV

So keep in mind that I hadn't ever had an epidural or any kind of pain relief before I went under general anesthesia. When I came to 45 minutes later, I still didn't have any kind of pain relief, and I could feel my incision in a really intense, burning, searing sort of way. Eric was there and was trying to distract me from the pain by showing me pictures of the baby he'd taken on his phone. Meanwhile, they were putting me on medicines that hadn't kicked in yet, and someone kept pushing on my stomach for reasons I still don't totally understand. Eric asked me later if I remembered what I'd said when they asked me how bad my pain was, and apparently I said 6. They put down 8, because I was clearly too out of it to be reliable. (I was sobbing, which is not what the little picture on the 6 on that pain scale chart looks like. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure it was more like a 10.) On the bright side, while the part before the surgery seemed insanely long, the part after, which Eric said took about an hour, seemed fairly short to me. I was awake, but still very out of it (I think my brain was shutting off periodically throughout the day because of the medications, but especially after that part) and although I remember some of it, it's already feeling fuzzy. I remember getting on an elevator to be transferred down to our room, and I remember at some point someone put baby D on the bed next to me so I could see her, but I can't remember when any of those things happened or what happened when we got to the room. Eric says they brought the baby in and let me hold her for a bit, then took her back to the nursery so I could sleep, but that I was awake until about 5 am.

My first time meeting this sweetie.

And now this is getting WAY too long, so I think I'll write about the recovery and add pictures in a separate post and go to bed. One final note for this part of the post: everyone at the hospital kept saying things like, "Well, aren't you glad you weren't in the birthing center?" It was like the biggest I told you so ever, and while yes, I am totally glad that things worked out so we were in the hospital when the prolapsed cord happened, and yes, the reason for induction was a really good one (HELLP syndrome) when they kept saying that the doctor had saved the baby's life by delivering her I was kind of like, "Yes, but the doctor also broke my water, which is probably why I ended up with the prolapsed cord in the first place . . ." So I'm not sorry that anything worked out the way it did, and because I'm now higher risk I probably won't try the birthing center again. However, I never felt like the midwives were incompetent or putting me in danger, and I felt very calm about my decision throughout most of my pregnancy. The midwives were actually the ones who told me to go to the hospital, and when I called them to tell them what was happening they didn't try to make me feel sad about the loss of the natural birth - they said, "I know this isn't what you expected, but this is your story and your birth, and it will be okay. I think if I hadn't had HELLP and if I hadn't had to be induced, it probably would have been a beautiful experience in the birthing center, and I really feel grateful that I got to know the midwives I worked with during my pregnancy. They were wonderful, knowledgeable people.  I truly believe we were protected and that things happened so we ended up where we were supposed to be, and I'm grateful for the priesthood and the spirit that I believe helped us to know what decisions we were supposed to make to get us where we needed to be.

More about the recovery and the babe herself coming later!

At this point in the pregnancy (36.5 weeks) it's hard not to be super negative. I'm just really exhausted all the time, and I feel sore and tired of being a human baby bjorn, anxious about all that needs to be done but lacking the energy to do it, sick of getting up multiple times a night to pee when I so desperately need to sleep, etc.

So to combat that after a long and tiring day and a week of crying over nothing because I'm just tired and hormonal and anxious, here's a list of reasons I'm grateful.

• Feeling grateful that Clara went to bed without much fuss despite fighting nap time and then taking a late car nap. 
• Feeling grateful that in a few more weeks I'll still be tired, but it won't be the tired of dragging extra weight and soreness around with me, it will be the tired that comes with a new baby. At this point I've been pregnant for so long that I'm starting to feel like my body is going to be this slow-moving and clumsy forever, but I keep reminding myself that once the baby is born I will start to feel better (or at least that's what happened last time.) No matter how bad of a sleeper the new little miss is, in another couple of months I will be able to get down on the floor to play with CB without wanting to die when it's time to haul myself back up. Food will taste good again, the crazy intense intestinal pain that sent us to the hospital a couple of weeks ago will probably go away too. 
• Feeling grateful for my patient, understanding husband who is doing more than his share of the cleaning and bending over, despite being crazy busy. I feel guilty because I feel like he gets neglected while I feel so lousy, and he just keeps taking care of me. 
• Feeling grateful for the bins full of clothes for this baby that I still have from the last one. Yes, I've bought a couple of new sleepers for the fun of it, but mostly we just get to pull out all of CB's clothes again, which fills my heart with joy when I think of how sad I felt putting them away the first time. 
• Feeling grateful that I have a cousin who is an awesome chiropractor and is helping me feel less sore than I did last time I was pregnant. 
• Feeling grateful for my sweet, cheerful child who has recently started saying "Lub you Mommy" and giving hugs and kisses without prompting, who makes it impossible to be sad because she immediately starts wiping tears away and saying, "No sad Mommy!" When I pretend to be sad and stick my bottom lip out, she pushes it back in and says, "Happy Mommy!" I can tell that my mood is making her a little more cranky than usual, but she's still just such a delightful person. I'm pretty sure she's going to be as cheery and wonderful as her dad. 
• I'm grateful we got to go to a family reunion last weekend, that the weather wasn't as miserable as I fear for St. George in August at 8 months pregnant, that I have an amazing extended family and that my husband and baby like them as much as I do. 

I'm not sure this post will be interesting to anyone else, but I know I have other friends with kids doing this kind of thing, and I will probably want to remember it, especially when I have other kids making the transition. So. Without further ado, here's what happened during the week of CB's transition to the big girl bed! If this sounds like the most boring topic ever, feel free to skip this post.

Happy birthday to my sweet TWO YEAR OLD girl today! I can't believe how fast the time has gone and how much things have changed.

CB is such a sweetie. She's starting to have a little more attitude from time to time (she definitely knows the word "no" now and sometimes I think she says it just because she wants to assert her independence) but she's overall a really agreeable, loving, hilarious little girl.

Here, in no particular order are some of CB's favorite things at the moment of turning 2:

• Pink baby, the doll I made her for Easter with the crazy pink hair. She already looks like she's been around for YEARS and has been washed multiple times, but CB carries her everywhere. I'll be curious to see if she gets a little break since she got a second Mommy-made baby for her birthday this morning. (Seriously. The Elsa pattern from Wee Wonderfuls makes a doll that is just the perfect shape for little hands to carry and to tuck under little arms. I've made two for CB, three that have been given as gifts, and one that I'm still deciding about.) 
• Daniel Tiger. After a brief period of boredom with Daniel during which she preferred Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, DT is back in full force. Thank goodness for more seasons being available on Amazon. 
• Cheese, Noodles, Yogurt and ice cream. (Or, "tees, noo-nles, dodurk and i-meam") I think these might constitute her absolute favorite foods. She's not a bad eater for a toddler (although it very much depends on the day) but these are most definitely her preferred foods. (I have my friend Debra's Cream Cheese Chicken in the crock pot right now because you serve it over noodles and CB always eats about 5 servings, so it was no contest what I should make for her birthday dinner.) 
• The park - going there, sliding on slides, swinging, and making mommy climb the stairs. 
• Going for walks to see the horsies. She LOVES the horses around our neighborhood and going for a stroller ride to see them. She got a wagon for her birthday (thank you, guy selling a BRAND NEW RADIO FLYER on KSL for super cheap!) so I'm excited to see what she thinks of walks in that. (Daddy is already a fan because of the super long handle.) 
• Movie nights with popcorn. She LOVES watching popcorn pop and she loves snuggling up on my bed to watch a movie. Sadly, we only own like 4 kids movies so far, so we're working on that. She really loves Sleeping Beauty at my parents' house, and since that was one of my favorites when I was little, it's on my list to acquire. 
• Going to Mama and Papa's house. This is her favorite thing ever. She asks to go to their house multiple times a week. She loves to play with them and she loves to play with their toys, and she really loves is when her cousins come too. 
• The color pink, with blue and purple coming in close behind.
• Trying on Mommy's bracelets and necklaces, usually all at once.
• Getting her toenails painted and showing them off to everyone
• Reading books at bedtime, especially books where she gets to respond, and especially if that response is an animal sound.

Oh hello there, sad lonely blog.

Here are the highlights of my life at the moment.

• I've hit 30 weeks with the pregnancy, which is AWESOME. It seems like it came so much faster than it did last time, and although I'm starting to feel a bit huge and miserable, 10 weeks doesn't seem like an eternity right now, which is a nice place to be. (I'm much less sore than I remember being with CB, probably because my body has made room for a baby once before and isn't protesting as much this time.) The baby was head down at my appointment yesterday, and she's wiggly as can be, and CB is finally starting to understand that there is a baby in mommy's tummy. Today she said, "Baby? Tummy?" out of nowhere, so we talked a little about how the baby would be her sister, and she said, "Baby sister. Tummy." She's stopped telling me the baby is in her tummy and seems to kind of get it when we listen to the baby's heartbeat at the midwife. Hopefully that will make it less of a shock when we bring little sister home.
• We're gearing up for CB's birthday, which is soon! I can't believe she's almost two. I'm working on finishing a quilt for her new big girl bed (actually my old big girl bed) so that we can make the transition this month and have room for little sister when she comes. I'm terrified of making the change, but the quilt is quite nice, and CB picked out some sheets with horses on them that she's excited about. 
• I really like making dolls. I made one for CB's birthday and then made one for her cousin who turned two yesterday. I'm starting to be okay at it, and I really like how they turn out and how they're all so different. It's a fun, cheap hobby that also leads to joy for my daughter (she really loves the last doll I made for her and carries it EVERYWHERE, and I had to hide the doll I was making for her cousin so she wouldn't cart it off too) and joy for my husband because it helps to quell my mom desires to buy lots of dolls and toys. The toys still make their way into our house (and a few other people's houses now that I'm getting more confident), but more slowly and less expensively, and hopefully more meaningfully since I'm making them myself with whoever gets the doll in mind. 
• This morning, after many weeks of searching, being disappointed because Costco sold out, trying to convince Eric that this is something we will use, etc. I managed to acquire a wagon. I found someone selling a Radio Flyer Pathfinder on KSL - brand new in the box for about half what it goes for on Amazon - and I jumped on it. It will be for the family, but we're going to reveal it on CB's birthday. 
• Daniel Tiger season 2 on Amazon Prime. Yes please. (Although for some reason on Prime it's listed as seasons 3 and 4. Not sure why.) CB was out of Daniel mode, but she's gone back and I was really tired of all of the episodes. New ones are nice. 
• Eric is nearly done with the craziness of early summer in the conference-filming business. We'll be excited to have him back a little more. 
• They started a little playgroup in our neighborhood, so I now actually know some of the other moms, which is nice. We really live in a very nice place. 

I'm blaming my blog death on the fact that I no longer have a laptop and my monitor often gets appropriated by the company for jobs and doesn't return. However, now I have a monitor of my own (that will by the name of my Virginia Woolf inspired book) and maybe I will blog from time to time.

So first of all, I think I should say that CB is 20 months old now, which is NUTSO. I was just looking over the post from 15 months and it is insane how much things have changed since then. Most significantly, when I last wrote about her, she had about seven words that she said regularly. Seven.

I have officially lost count of the number of words she says now. I will attempt to mention categories instead.

1. She is OBSESSED with animals (which is a word she says) and knows the names and sounds of SO MANY, which she can also identify by sight. It's a really fun game to say, "Hey, can you be a ____________?" and then throw out an animal. She's really good at the names and sounds of cows, kitties, doggies, fish, owls, snakes, bats (bats don't make a sound, but they do wiggle their fingers at you - same with spiders and butterflies or "bu-bies", but they don't say "bat bat" while they do it), giraffes (which stick out their tongues), foxes (ring-ding-ding, of course) horses, elephants (el-poot), lions, tigers, bears, dinosaurs, ducks, and more that I'm not remember. She also likes to say hippo, piggie and octopus (oc-poos) and calls monkeys, frogs and chickens by their sounds (ee-ees, ribbits and bok boks, respectively). We recently took her to the zoo and it was so fun to see how into it she was. She told us what things were and what they said and requested animals. (I assume when she roared it was because she wanted to see the tiger.) 
2. She knows most of her body parts - all of her (and your) face, plus arms, hands, legs, feet, belly button, and armpit. (Daddy taught her that one.) If you ask where her armpit is she will show you - and then she will expect to be tickled. 
3. She knows how to say and deliver hugs and kisses, which is fun, especially now that they aren't open mouth kisses. 
4. She knows meals (breakfast, snack and dinner, or befuss, nack and nin-ner) and her favorite foods (cheese, bread, yogurt, cracker, cookie, cupcake, milk, juice and water) and she requests those things often. She'll also accept almost anything if you tell her she can dip it. 
5. She's really interested in the potty and will tell me when she's about to poop ("Stinky?") but I don't feel at all like we were ready to do the potty training thing, so I'm just encouraging her to be interested and to tell me in the hopes that it will help things along later. She also likes the bath and loves "buddles" (bubbles) in her tub.  
6. She loves babies and knows her baby cousin by name. She knows a lot of her cousins, but she's especially enamored with Grandma ("Mama") and Grandpa ("Papa") and Maggie, Nancy ("Nana") and Samantha ("Manna"). She also recently started calling me Mommy in addition to the "Mom" that I'd been getting for a few months now. She can say her own name, but she pronounces is "Wadda." Useful to all of you who don't know her real name, I know.