January 2007

01/31/07

We seem to have fully recovered from the party-filled weekend.  Tommy's been super mellow the last couple of days, which is good for me because I just feel like sitting around and reading and eating the excellent birthday chocolates that my Dad sent me.  Tommy's a bit miffed that there isn't going to be a party for my birthday on Friday.  He's expecting a cake, but we haven't finished eating his cake yet, so I doubt we'll have another one.  Maybe I can convince him that pie is a reasonable alternative.  I opened all my presents as they arrived, so he's probably going to disappointed about that too.  I don't mind having my birthday things spread out over a week or so, but Tommy's going to be disappointed when Friday is just a regular day.  He's pretty focused on the proper way to do things these days.

We're just about finished with the nursery.  My Mom bought us almost all of the decorative items and bedding that tie into the room decor.  David's parents bought a bookcase for the room.  The guests at the shower provided the rest.  It's amazing how much less money you have to spend to get ready for a second baby, especially when you still get presents from people.  I'll take pictures when I'm finished tweaking the final details.  I'm so happy that I went with Winnie the Pooh for the room.  I've always wanted a Pooh nursery, but "let" Cindy have that decor when we were simultaneously pregnant with Tommy and Claudia.  I've had a great set of original Ernest Shepard Pooh prints since I was a baby, and I've framed five of them for the room.

I bought a few things at Target yesterday, and Tommy and I will make one - only one! - trip to Babies R Us in the next few days, and then we'll be done.  I still only have four clothing items in size 0-3 months (Tommy just wore 3-6 month clothes from day one), and can't decide if I should buy more.  Since I'll be pregnant for 18 fewer days this time, it's very likely the baby will be at least a pound smaller.  Most 3-6 month clothes start at 12 lbs, so it made sense to just skip the smaller size for Tommy.  He could have worn it for a couple of weeks though.  Maybe I'll just wait and see if I get any clothes in that size as gifts and also wait to see the actual size of the baby.  I can always send David out to buy a bunch of clothes after the birth.   But then we might end up with interesting color combinations.

01/29/07

Happy Birthday Tommy!  Tommy is three years old today.  His pirate birthday party was yesterday, so from his perspective his birthday is already over.  The logistics of trying to do my baby shower and Tommy's birthday party with many of the same guests on the same weekend necessitated that we do his birthday party from 4-7 pm on Sunday.  Tommy and Claudia and Duncan (the only kids in attendance) seemed to have a lot of fun, but the late time for the party was a bit hard on them.  I was really lucky to have David and Sylvia (David's mom) here to do most of the running around and decorating for me.  I still over-did it of course, but their help allowed me to have the decorations and food exactly the way I wanted them.  Our guests for the evening were Dan, Cindy, Claudia and Duncan, Eric & Karen, Megan (poor Brian was sick), and Grandma Sylvia.  Here are pictures! 

Blowing up balloons with David.  There was more playing than actual blowing.  I didn't get a good picture of the decorations, but David did an excellent job with the streamers and balloons.  Tommy was very impressed.

The one and only game was a treasure hunt for Tommy and Claudia.  I took pictures of various things in our house and then taped them up for the kids to follow.  So they started with a picture of a kitchen chair and on that chair they found a picture of the refrigerator which led them to a picture of the fish tank, etc.  Eventually they found a Tommy's stuffed animal box with a big X-marks-the-spot.  They had to dig through the animals to find their treasure.  The game was a big hit.

Tommy's big present from us was the nifty inflatable pirate ship.  He spent all day in it yesterday, and was super excited to share it with Claudia and Duncan.  They pretty much didn't need any other entertainment for the rest of the party.

The requisite New Mexico piñata.  I couldn't find a pirate one with the easy-open pull strings.  David rigged up a trap door in the bottom that was lightly taped shut, but it was still too hard for them to break open without help.

Present opening.  I'm actually really glad we had a small party so Tommy didn't get overwhelmed with huge amounts of presents to open.  He actually stopped to give out thank you hugs every time he opened one.  I was quite pleased.

The most excellent pirate cake.  It actually tasted pretty good too.

Relaxing quietly with Grandma the morning after.  They were watching Tommy's favorite documentary about THE DEEP and comparing the ocean creatures on the TV with the ones in his books.  I think we all have party, cake and candy hangovers.

01/28/07

Baby shower pictures!  My good friend Cindy threw me a lovely shower at the St. James Tea Room yesterday.  The food and tea were yummy, the gifts were perfect, and the conversation was wonderful.

01/25/07

As I was sitting here, I saw Tommy do his sneaky walk towards me.  He was holding a banana peel.  I pretended not to watch him, because I wanted to see what he'd do.  He carefully set the banana peel on the tile between the living room and office.  He was muttering "slippery, slippery, slippery" to himself.  Then he ran quickly over to the couch, giggling the whole way.   He put his open hand next to his mouth in the classic Tommy-hollering pose and yelled "Mommy!  I need you!  Come in the living room!"  I didn't slip on the banana peel on my way over to him.  He was very disappointed. 

This morning I woke up at 5:50 with a leg cramp.  Ten minutes later Tommy started frantically calling for me.  I hobbled into him, and we had the following conversation.  Even though he didn't startle me awake from a deep sleep, I was still a bit grumpy about the whole thing. 

T: What's that dinosaur called again?  I can't remember. 

S:  I don't know.  Which dinosaur? 

T:  I said I can't remember! 

S:  Was it a plant eater or a meat eater? 

T: A meat eater. 

S:  Tyrannosaurus Rex? 

T:  No.  I always 'member that one.  It was a different one. 

S:  Where did you see it?  In a book or a movie? 

T:  A book. 

S:  Which book? 

T:  The dinosaurs go to the doctor one. 

S:  Tommy, I don't know, and it's still dark so we can't get the book out to find it.  Go back to sleep. 

T:  Aw man!  I'm very frustrated.

S:  I know Tommy.  But it's too early to get up.  Maybe you'll remember it.

T:  Oh!  I do remember!  Gorgosaurus.  It's gorgosaurus Mommy.  The spikey T-Rex. 

S:  I'm so glad you remembered.  Go back to sleep. 

T:  OK Mommy.

01/23/07

Tommy got an early birthday present yesterday.  He already had the Little People Pirate Ship (left), but we found this Pirate Lagoon and Phantom Shark (right) on sale at Toys R Us yesterday.  I probably should have wrapped it up for him, but since he was with me when I bought it I let him open it.  We've been having pirate and shark battles ever since.  This morning he woke up asking about his Baboon.  It took me quite a while to realize he meant Lagoon.  If I remind him, he'll say Laaaaa-Goon, but after a few minutes he converts it to Gagoon and it's only a hop, skip and a jump from there to Baboon. 

(If anyone's still looking for a birthday present for him, there's a big Pirate Ship that goes with the Lagoon from FisherPrice Imaginext Phantom Adventure Series and there's also a Captain Hook Pirate Ship from the Disney Heroes Peter Pan series that looks interesting.  Neither seem to be available at Amazon, so I guess maybe our Toys R Us just has them left over from Christmas or something.  Not that we need any more big toys to find homes for, as you can see by our new set of toy storage shelves that now have a prominent place in our living room.)

01/21/07

There's a new set of comparison photos on the page of pregnancy pictures.

01/20/07

Paint?  Check!  Wallpaper?  Check!  We're making progress!

01/18/07

We're having a quiet day today.  I really need to go to the grocery store, but I think we'll just forage for random slices of cheese, peanut butter on tortillas and frozen vegetables for dinner.  Tommy was up at least every two hour last night.  He did this Monday night too.  I made the mistake of mentioning that this baby brother he's all excited about will have to be born in the hospital -- and I'm going to have to be gone for a few days when this happens.  Tommy's not too happy about that.  "PLEASE don't go away Mommy!"  I think that's why he's been waking up so much lately.  He's been needing a lot of reassurance that I'm HERE ever since he realized that I will be gone for a few nights in the future. 

David tried to settle him back to bed the first time Tommy woke up last night.  David was still watching TV, and I had already gone to bed, so I guess that made sense.  It's probably what started the miserable night for me though.  I think Tommy will be fine with David as comforter when I'm actually not here, but being told that he needs to go back to bed without seeing me even though he KNOWS I'm just in the other room was quite upsetting to him.  New rule in our house.  Tommy gets to see me when he wants me if I'm actually home.  Maybe if he'd gotten to come in to give me a snuggle he would have let David put him back to bed and then would have slept worry-free for the rest of the night instead of waking up in a panic searching for me with his various flashlights every two hours all night long.  I guess this is good practice for the sleepless nights ahead of me.

01/16/07

Tommy Tidbits...

• He has this new facial expression that is just priceless.  If you say something that he thinks is incorrect he'll kind of scrinch up one eye while gently correcting you.  "I think it's in the other box, Mom."  I wonder if I do that?
• When he decides he knows something for certain, there is absolutely no way you can convince him he is wrong.  That's my boy!  We humor him because he can't read yet, so we can't actually prove to him that he's wrong by looking up the facts.  His logic is usually sound anyway.  This usually comes up when we're reading one of his dinosaur or ocean books.  Different artists in different books portray the same dinosaurs and sea creatures differently, so it makes sense that he would go by the pictures instead of the words he can't read.  If he decides something is a grouper or a gorgosaurus because it looks exactly like one in another book, then there's really no use arguing with him.
• Every time we go grocery shopping Tommy eats a whole pint of cherry tomatoes that we pick up in the produce section.  We shop at the same time every week, so we usually have the same checker and bagger.  They're used to us and love Tommy, so they just know to ring up the empty tomato package when we come through.  Last week we got to the store a couple hours later than usual, so the people we regularly see were at lunch.  Tommy ate his tomatoes as usual.  Everybody we saw made a really big deal about it.  I guess it must seem strange or impressive to adults who don't know that the boy is a bottomless pit when it comes to fruits and vegetables.  After the third or fourth person commented about the tomatoes and asked Tommy about them, he finally started picking up on the idea that what he was doing was something out of the ordinary.  Now he wants even more tomatoes.
• I picked up a toy cash register for Tommy at Target yesterday.  (Why can't I manage to leave that store without at least one unplanned purchase?)  He runs around with his shopping cart picking out play food.  Then he goes to his cash register, pushes a bunch of buttons and takes out some play money.  He adds that to his cart.  "I'm all done shopping!  I got all the food and cash we need!"  He usually sees me use a debit card instead of money to buy groceries, and I often get cash back at the grocery store.  It's all very logical.  We'll work on the idea of using cash to buy things later.
• We finally painted the baby's room this weekend.  We still have to put up the wallpaper border, but things are a lot farther along than they were last week.  Tommy's very happy that the baby's room is now the same color as his room.  I'll post pictures of the room when we get everything finished.  That will probably be about three days before the C-Section.     

01/13/07

I'm finally feeling better, but still have a lingering chest cough.  If it doesn't go away completely in another week I'll start being aggressive with various doctors.  I really don't want to be coughing immediately after a C-Section.

We did find babysitters for today, so David and I are going out to lunch and a movies.  Yippee!  Thank you to our friends Brian and Megan who will be spending the afternoon with Tommy.

We've narrowed our baby name search down to two top choices -- Henry David Epp and Patrick David Epp.  David and Tommy and I like both of the names equally, and we're having a hard time picking one over the other.  If you want to give us your opinion, you can vote on the poll I've put up on the sidebar.  You can vote one time per day as long as I keep the poll up.  We think it will be fun to see what you all think (especially since lots of you don't know us personally), but make no promises to actually be influenced by your opinions.  We're going to do whatever we want when it comes down to making a decision.  As usual, you can always e-mail me if have more to say.

01/11/07

Happy anniversary to us!  Today is our 11th anniversary.  We're probably going to go out this weekend if we can arrange a babysitter.  If we can't then we'll go someplace with Tommy in tow.

Tommy's third birthday is at the end of the month.  We went to the party store on Tuesday, and Tommy decided that he wanted a Pirate Party.  I think it's going to be a smaller party this year than last year.  I haven't been very good at keeping up with playdates and finding friends for Tommy while I've been pregnant.  Both of his grandmothers will be in town on his birthday weekend though, so it will be more of a family party than usual. 

Anyway, in honor of his upcoming birthday, here's a top-five list of things I particularly adore about Tommy at this age.

5.  He loves the kinds of books that have lots of small detailed pictures that he can study for a long time.  His two favorites right now are Imagine and 1001 Things to Spot in the Sea.  He does enjoy more traditional stories with characters and plot and stuff, but it's also really nice to sit down with him and really explore his interest in identifying and classifying things.  I have to work hard to keep up, but it's amazing to watch him absorb names and facts about hundreds of sea creatures and dinosaurs and animals.

4.  He not only says "thank you" unprompted, but he usually says "Oh thank you!" with great fervor and sincerity.  This was one thing we never taught him.  He just started doing it on his own before he even turned two.  I guess I must say it like that when he gives me something.

3.  He still has a very intense need for touch.  It might have been exhausting when he was younger, but knowing that my three-year-old (almost) still wants and needs hugs and snuggles and lap-sitting and hand-holding on an hourly basis is really nice.

2. He still spontaneously says "I love you" to us and others during special quiet moments.  I didn't realize that this was unusual until recently.  We're very lucky.

1.  He's very aware of how others are feeling.  He used to get really upset when others were sad, but we've managed to teach him that instead of being scared he should try to help.  There's nothing better than getting the pregnancy-induced weepies and then having your little boy notice, jump up, pat your hair, and say "It's OK.  Tommy's here."  It always works.  He does this for his friends too.  (Hopefully this little scenario isn't going to give him a complex when he grows up, but I think he's pretty easy going about the whole thing.  He just likes to know what to do when other people are emotional.)

01/09/07

You know you've been noticeably sick when you have this sort of conversation.

Me:  Would you like pancakes for lunch, Tommy?

Tommy:  What!?  Pancakes?!

Me:  Yes.  Pancakes.  Would you like some?

Tommy:  You feel like cooking today?!

Me:  Sure.  I'll cook pancakes if you'd like some.

Tommy:  I'd love some pancakes.  I'm going to be so happy.  You are a good cook, Mommy.  You're feeling much better for cooking.  After pancakes we can play.  After we play we can go outside.  This is a GREAT day!

Me:  Let's start with some pancakes.

01/08/07

Tommy had his very first dental appointment today.  As I expected, he really enjoyed it and astounded them all with his easy-going, intelligent maturity.  Bragging is fun, isn't it?  He was happy to meet everyone, and full of answers to questions, and thought the whole experience was super fun.  He didn't get a cleaning today, since it was supposed to be an introductory visit, but the dentist said that Tommy probably would have been perfectly OK with it if they'd tried.  Seriously.  They couldn't get over how calm and cooperative and verbal he is for his age.  I guess those first 18 months of super-uptight-babyhood have a flip side. 

01/07/07

Phooey on you winter virus!

I'm still sick, but am slowly recovering a little bit.  My OB gave me a short course of antibiotics, but they don't seem to be making much of a difference.  Tommy and David have an extremely mild version of the chest cough now (without all the other miserable symptoms I seem to have), so it's probably viral.  All we can do is wait now.  The whole thing is making me very grumpy, so the less I talk about it the better.  Tommy's now scared of my coughing.  The fact that both of his saltwater fish (Nemo and Soofie) got sick before Christmas doesn't make things any better.  They ended up dying despite all of our careful ministrations.  He still asks about them, and is inches away from that whole sick vs. dying conversation.  Plus, his Buzz Lightyear toy is broken (sick) and we can't fix it and he doesn't like the options of either keeping the broken one or throwing it away and getting a new one.  Deep thoughts for a little boy.  He's a bit high maintenance right now, as am I.  Poor David.  We have six weeks and four days until I go to the hospital to have this baby and I am unable to do any of the sorting, cleaning, painting, reorganizing, etc that needs to be done because I've been sick forever.  As you can imagine, this also makes me very grumpy.

I've posted the Week 32 pregnancy picture. 

01/03/07

I'm getting sick and tired of being sick.  I felt better temporarily on Monday the 1st, but went downhill quickly yesterday.  Now I'm coughing up a lung and have a fever.  I think the cold that I've had since Dec 22nd has developed into a secondary respiratory infection.  Yuck.  Luckily I have an OB appointment tomorrow.  I'm sure my doctor will have a plan for getting me well while protecting the baby.  I know this is the most boring post ever.  I just wanted to let you know why I seem to have dropped of the face of the earth this week.  Poor Tommy is just barely managing to stay entertained with lots of TV now that David is back at work.  I'm trying to conserve my energy and focus on getting well, so I'm not exactly the most fun playmate for him.  I can't even really send him outside to play since he's decided that there's just too much deep snow in the yard for a little fellow. 

See the archives for earlier entries.