about me

so this pregnancy has been going really well. i don't have the overwhelming fatigue that i experienced with madelyn and mason which has been really helpful. i am definitely worn out, but not to an extreme. although i did go to sleep at 7:30 last night when i normally go to sleep about 10:30 or 11:00 on a typical night.

this one has been much more about nausea. just about everything makes me feel unpleasant. no vomiting but definitely unwell. the biggest problem with this is that i am starving! pregnancy and nursing take everything i have and then some! my stomach is usually growling when i get in bed at night.

i am still nursing mason three times a day. we have switched him to whole milk before bed at night to try and help with his early morning wake-ups (his doctor said this was fine). but it does not seem to have made a huge difference. both my doctor and his said that i can nurse as long as i would like but that i might find it a little awkward as my belly continues to grow. he only has a few more months to nurse any way so i think we will make it. love.

madelyn is excited

madelyn seemed to know right away that i was pregnant but thankfully she didn't tell anyone until we started to share the news. i just said something about my stomach one day and she said that there was a baby in my belly - opps.

she tells me almost every day that she "wants the new baby today" (but imagine a very whiny voice). she has decided that the new baby is a boy and she wants to know what his name is going to be. she also asks often when the baby is going to be here. her excitement about the new baby seems to be growing and she really liked getting to hear the baby's heartbeat at the doctor's office.

while madelyn is so excited i have started talking to her about sharing her room. if it is a girl, the baby will sleep in her room because madelyn sleeps like she is in a comma. and if it is a boy, we will move mason in with madelyn until the baby sleeps through the night because mason is a very light sleeper. her main concern is that she would have to share her actual bed, but once i explained that there would be a second bed or crib in her room she was fine with it. we even got to have a trial run when we babysat a friend's infant last weekend. we put the baby in mason's room and then let mason sleep in madelyn's room. it was fun to hear her laughing and trying to get mason to stop crying (he cries every time we put him down to sleep). they both were asleep within five minutes and slept all night until mason started crying at 5:30am.

she is even excited about moving her car seat into the back row of the mini-van. this was actually the transition that i was most worried about so i was pretty happy to hear her interest in moving back. now if we can just keep all this excitement going until november... love.

one more picture

here is one more picture from mason's 9-month photo shoot...

if you can't read their shirts - mason is going to be a big brother and madelyn is going to be a big sister again. baby #3 is due on november 9! its one or two months earlier that we had expected, but we couldn't be happier. this is the first time we haven't had a long wait for a healthy pregnancy. in fact, i have felt so good this first trimester that it made me a little nervous. but i am happy to say that the ultrasound showed a healthy baby. and i am a little happy not to have another june birthday. much more to come on this soon (madelyn is really, really excited), but i am so tired after my 'ridiculous day' that i am going to bed. love.

ridiculous day

today was just a ridiculous day and it was only fitting that it was a monday! as i mentioned a few posts ago, computer troubles have really been slowing me down and stressing me out. i finally got connected with our i.t. director at work this morning to discuss what he wants to do about my computer but he was heading in to a meeting so said that he would have to call me back. so i started to backup my hard drive in case i needed to ship my computer down to him for repairs.

madelyn was the 'snack friend' today at school so i had made the sunflower biscuits last night (the theme for the day was "flowers") and had almost everything packed up except for the jelly to serve with it that i thought for sure i would forget in the morning. i got everyone loaded up in the car, remembered the jelly, and headed off to school a little later than i wanted because of messing with the computer stuff and prepping for meetings in case the computer died again.

on the way to school i realized that i forgot to grab a jacket for madelyn to wear during recess. oh well. she was wearing long sleeves and it wasn't that cold out. i wasn't going back home. but then i pulled into the school's parking lot and realized that i forgot to put her backpack in the car. and her backpack had her state required two blankets, "friend", and her water cup in it. i was going to have to come back with it later in the morning. ugh!

so back home for my 10:30 meeting which ended up not starting until 11:00 because my boss was running a little late. the problem was that i had not put mason down for his nap because i was going to wait until after i ran madelyn's backpack up to the school. but since the meeting was later than planned he started to get fussy. i ran up for a bowl, some cereal, and water to keep him happy while he had to wait a little longer for his nap. that worked out great except eating on the floor meant that his wet hands picked up every stray dog hair on the floor and i was grossed out! not that it bothered him at all. and then once my meeting started mason reached up and pulled a huge pile of folders off my desk on top of him and he started to scream. again - ugh! thankfully, i got him quieted down pretty quickly and finished up my meeting.

now it was almost 11:30 and madelyn's class goes down for their nap shortly after their noon lunch so i felt like i needed to hurry and get her stuff up to the school. i grabbed my 'keys', sunglasses, and phone on my way out the door with mason. i get him all settled, run around to my seat, and go to start the car - "key is not detected" - where in the world is it?! our car doesn't have an actual 'key'. it has a fob that just has to be in the car for it to start. so i jump out and look in the house again, no key (i still call it a "key" because i don't like saying "fob"). i open mason's door and check all around his car seat - no key. i figure that i must have buckled it in under him so i just run in a grab the spare so that i can leave. i can always find it later. i am about a mile from the house when i hear a sound outside the car. normally i would have just written it off as something in the road because it wasn't really that loud or concerning, but i had a bad feeling about this noise since there was a missing key somewhere. i pulled over and looked around not finding anything. then i decided to go ahead and double back a little to see if there is anything in the road. sure enough there is the fob laying in the road! thankfully it was in the center of the lane and the cars weren't running it over and i was able to make an illegal u-turn right to it. there was also an unusual break in traffic that allowed me to run into the road and get it without risk. thank goodness it wasn't even scratched! i kept thinking that matt is going to kill me when i saw it in the road. those fobs cost like $500 to replace!

that is when i decided that this day has been ridiculous.

i got madelyn's stuff to the school and she asked if she should go home. honestly, i thought about just taking her home then so that i didn't have to come back again in a few hours to pick her up. but i sucked it up and let her finish out her day. i am happy to report that my day picked up a little bit after that too.

i still had a few more oddities, like accidentally hanging up on dell tech support while they were getting my dispatch number for service call that is hopefully going to happen tomorrow. (their website was not working when i tried to find their phone number again to change my service call and i realized that if i could get back in bed, this was really the day for it.) but my netbook is working again (obviously, because i am suddenly posting again) and there is a light at the end of the tunnel with my work computer - assuming dell shows up tomorrow.

i am just glad that this day is over. love.

madelyn notes too

not to be left out, here are a few quick notes about madelyn too.

- one of her favorite games is "you be madelyn and i'll be mommy". i can't even describe how much she loves to play this almost daily. sunday she and i were running errands together while the boys were at home and as we were walking through the parking lot she said, "madelyn, hold my hand so the cars don't get you" (we were already 'playing'). i think she just loves calling me "madelyn" and insists that i call her "mommy". we must seem pretty funny walking through the store with her pushing the cart she can't see over and me calling her "mommy". i must admit that i love playing it with her because she just thinks that it is so funny.

- another thing about madelyn that i love right now is that she thinks everyone cares about her. she is always trying to tell the cashier about what we are buying or the store we are going to next or her toy at home that madelyn thinks is special. they usually do not share her enthusiasm or even understand what she is talking about so out of context, but she is not discouraged. although sometimes she will ask about why that girl/boy didn't talk to me.

and that is it for now. love.

mason update

so much has been going on while i haven't been able to get on any of the computers! here is a quick run down of the latest with mason...

- he got two teeth last week. the first was the left bottom on tuesday (4/20) and the second was the right bottom on saturday (4/24), so now he has all four on the bottom and all four on the top.

- and speaking of teeth... mason is a biter! it is hard to tell when he comes at you with his mouth open if it is for a kiss or a firm bite. madelyn and i have both had bruises from his biting. he doesn't do it to be mean. i think that most of it is just because he is trying to climb up on you, but it can still hurt. we are working on it. let's just say that i think there is a good chance his first sentence will be "no biting!"

- tonight he wore 2t jammies to bed

- mason has gotten pretty good at waving "hi" and really enjoys that he can. the picture is his extreme reaching wave and i just liked it best.

- mason can crawl up a flight of stairs so we have to be careful to close the door to the stairs when we are down in the office.

- it sounds like he says "hi, dad" when he sees matt and that is the only time he says it so i am pretty sure that is what he is indeed saying.

- mason really loves books. more that even madelyn did. he doesn't always love to have them read to him, but he loves to get them down, sit, and turn the pages over and over. madelyn would just chew them up. i can actually let mason look at books in the car because he doesn't put them in his mouth.

- there is a first word book that madelyn always liked that has become one of mason's favorites too. the funny part is that she loved the "boy" on the boy/girl pages and mason loves the "girl". it even sounds like he says, "girl", almost clearly, when he sees her picture in the book.

- he also has distinct sounds for indicating "more" ("mo-mo-mo"), "drink" (he makes a motorboat noise - it always means that he is thirsty), and "dog" (sort of a cross between "oo-oo-oo" and "og-og-og", but unique to when he sees our dogs).

- he eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch every day - cut up of course. it is so nice to have something quick to prep that fills him up. it saves me a ton of time at lunch.

- mason eats next to nothing off a spoon any more. it is almost exclusively finger food. and he is much more open to trying everything which has been a lot easier than madelyn's transition to table food because she doesn't take well to spices of any kind (including salt and pepper).

- sleeping has been going great since we started to try and stuff him during the day and changed him to one nap on most days. although he has been starting to creep back up towards 5:30 and 6:00am again the past two days...

that is all i can remember right now. i started this post a while ago and had a really long list but for some reason it didn't save and i had to start over. once i put it on a post i let it go from my memory and i had a hard time trying to recover it from the recesses of my brain. oh well. love.

chase

this is how madelyn and mason 'chase' each other. i love how mason spins in a circle to 'chase' her as she runs by because he gets too excited. love.

madelyn 'reading'

madelyn was really excited to tell me that she "knew the words" when we were riding in the car on monday. that is what madelyn calls reading now - "knowing the words". she has been able to 'read' books from memory for a while, but it is actually starting to sound like she is actually reading. she gets distracted in this video from her 'reading' but it was still funny to me so i left it in. sorry that it is so long, but its a long book. and i don't know when she decided that was what the book was called because every other time she has called it "the grouchy ladybug". love.

computer trouble

i am having trouble with the computer i use to post so that is why there haven't been any and why i am just posting quick ones tonight. (i still have a lot of work, work that needs to get done tonight for meetings tomorrow.)

hopefully, we will get this resolved by next week. we are also starting to have problems with our camera so posts might continue to be erratic. love.

walking the lion

mason has started walking with our lion toy in the past few days. this video is from sunday night. love.

fun in the car

madelyn has been making mason laugh in the car by shrieking at him. last week he started to answer her shrieks with one of his own to make her laugh too. since i am usually driving, the opportunity for video isn't really there. this weekend though i was able to get a different version of the same game. love.

i love green beans

lunch is usually mason's most happy meal. but for some reason i never take pictures or video. maybe it is because i am just enjoying the time with him. anyway, i thought he was being pretty cute with his green beans today so here it is. love.

"that was me"

when madelyn farts she says, "that was me". or "that was you, dad." and it is a statement of fact, not a joke or something to laugh at. just claiming what is hers. i told her yesterday that she could just say, "excuse me," but she explained that "excuse me" is only for burping. well, okay then. love.

mason moving

so i realized that i haven't been that great at posting videos of mason on the move. he is really getting around now so i tried to get a lot of him playing this weekend. here is an edited together collection of him playing.

one of madelyn's favorite games to play with him is "climb on me". they kind of roll around almost in a wrestle like manor but mason isn't always a fan. he does laugh like crazy if he is in the mood and he does do the climbing in the first place because madelyn isn't supposed to force him to do things.

but then she has come up with a way to make him come or stay where she wants him to play with her. she isn't allowed to pick him up, but she found a way around that. the good news is that even though it doesn't look like he should, he loves when she does it! enjoy! love.

school pictures

madelyn had school picture last month and we just got the class picture. she had a big bruise on her head the week before and while it had faded you could still see it. thankfully, she picked a nice outfit for picture day. she really picked it all on her own. the sweater and everything.

there were some wonderful pictures of her individually, but man oh man where they expensive! almost $20 a sheet! i am very happy with the ones i get at jcp for $3.99 a sheet. but i couldn't resist this one and did buy one sheet.

thankfully, the class picture was only $6.50 so that was an easy buy. and since i had to pre-pay i didn't get to see her expressionless face before we picked it up. i guess they had a really hard time getting the kids to pose and look at the camera all at the same time.

from left to right, top to bottom, here is madelyn's 2s class: collin, mrs. wolff, madelyn, ava, kiwi, kiera, kenny, gavin, and sullivan.

madelyn took the picture to the park tonight to show all the kids her school friends. i don't think they were as excited as she was. oh well. it didn't keep her from trying to show them over and over. love.

housekeepers

madelyn likes the vacuum cleaner and now we know that mason does too. matt was cleaning the bathroom and madelyn had been helping him, but then he wanted me to give her another task. after baking some cookies (before you get too impressed it was just refrigerated rounds, but madelyn thought that it was fun), i started vacuuming up crumbs from under the table because mason is now a scavenger - he is always hungry.

and then i put madelyn to work. i gave her the extension (i don't know what else to call it) and sent her hunting for crumbs in the kitchen. mason came over the check it out too. he helped by holding the cord for her. i think she spent a half-hour 'vacuuming' and it was really helpful. she did a great job! she kept hunting for crumbs after we put the vacuum away and when she found some we got it back out. how can i ignore such enthusiasm for cleaning?

mason gave me the opportunity to capture his love for the bathroom. a few days earlier i had to give madelyn a bath after she had been out helping daddy in the yard and came in filthy. mason just stood at the tub like he is in this picture trying to get the bath toys and madelyn's hair. he just loves hair - mine and madelyn's - and not just to pull, but to touch and play with. and, yes, pull.

he has added the bathroom to his selection of favorite places in the house. since he was a baby he loved bath time and having his hair rinsed so maybe that is part of the attraction. but this isn't really somewhere we want him to wander to unattended so we have been working with madelyn on keeping the door closed when it is not in use. especially that he has become more interested in toilets as a fixture to pull up on.

in the picture he was working around the edge of the tub pushing in all the toys. he was knocking them in and then seeing if he could reach them. but since the tub was dry he couldn't reach them - i don't think he minded though. love.

galoshes

madelyn got a pair of galoshes (or wellies, or rain boots, or whatever you would like to call them). i have always thought that they were adorable, but didn't know if i wanted to spend the money to encourage puddle hopping. but then her school asked that parents keep sending boots so that the kids could still play outside if it was a little wet out. i could have just sent her snow boots but felt they were too bulky for warmer weather and we went looking for some galoshes.

ever the practical pair, matt and i opted for a gender neutral pair with hand-me-down potential. lucky for us madelyn loves them and they match her clothes better than anything pink ever would have (read: we do not need any girly galoshes, grandmas).

for our trip to the zoo last friday madelyn selected a blue dress over jeans and her blue galoshes - "for jumping in puddles". sadly, even though we had snow/rain that week (yes, i said snow), the ground was relatively dry. much to madelyn's disappointment. she also discovered that galoshes are really a 'walking' shoe and by the time we were heading out she wanted to be carried because her feet hurt. her feet must not have hurt her too much because she selected her galoshes as the footwear of choice for the rest of the weekend.

while the galoshes were not appropriate weather-wise, she could not have looked cuter wearing them. especially when she wore them with some long shorts on sunday and had her hair in pig tails. too bad she wouldn't let me take her picture.

mason stayed awake our entire time at the zoo. i think that he is going to lose his morning nap in hopes that he will sleep longer at night. he doesn't seem to really need it since most days it is only 20-45 minutes while his afternoon nap is 2 hours or more. the doctor suggested this might be an option since he isn't that great of a napper most of the time anyway. and he has been getting up at 5am pretty consistently since the time change and yesterday he got up at 4am - for the day! and he is perfectly happy, not tired in the slightest. now matt and i on the other hand...

we are also trying to feed him as much as he wants instead of cutting him off after a ridiculous amount of food like we had been doing; just incase he isn't getting enough food during the day to sleep all night. the good news is that he will pretty much eat anything we give him and loves finger foods. the bad news is that he will eat for an hour straight! and eats more than matt or i ever could. he has already had foods that we might have waited a little while longer for him to try but sometimes i run out of ideas and just give him whatever madelyn is eating. we have even started giving him whole milk to try and give him more calories before bed (his doctor said that was fine whenever we wanted to start him on it when we discussed at his 9-month appointment). he seems happier with the increase in food and he did sleep until 6am this morning - a huge improvement! i keep hoping that this lack of sleep phase will end soon, but at least i am pretty good at functioning on very little sleep. it would be much, much worse if he was crabby from the early mornings but he just remains his normal, happy self. it could always be worse. love.

tooth number six

i forgot to mention that mason got tooth number 6 on monday. it has been visible for weeks but just couldn't get through the gum. so now he has 4 large (bigger than maddie's) teeth on the top and two little bitty teeth on the bottom. and there doesn't seem to be any indication that the bottom two will have company any time soon.

and i have to brag on madelyn a little bit because she has been so wonderful lately. besides being a great helper, cleaning up her toys, being a good listener, there has been little to no crying or whining. and she has been the best possible big sister! when mason got one of her favorite toys last night she told us, happily, that she was going to wait for it to be her turn. (the house rule is that if she leaves it where mason can get it, he gets to play with it.) matt and i just exchanged shocked expressions and then praised her for waiting her turn and sharing with mason.

she is always trying to get mason to play with her. they were playing while i was on the phone tonight and i realized that it got very quiet and that mason was not in the living room any more. of course that means i needed to go check things out. they were both inside the tent in her room and playing with her instruments. when i saw them madelyn proudly showed me how she had taken out the large pillow she keeps in there to use as a blanket. this was significant because when mason first started crawling i told madelyn that the pillow was way to big for mason - i was afraid that she would smother him with it. not to mention that it has been a really long time since we discussed this in the first place.

in a time when i am still feeling lousy with my cough/cold, mason isn't sleeping all that late, and i have a lot going on this week, madelyn has been my shining joy over the past few weeks. and in more positive news, mason has learned to sit himself back down instead of standing and screaming in his crib for hours. we can finally let him cry it out. last night it took only 20 minutes instead of the two hours or more that matt has been helping me with over the past few days/nights.

i expected the worst from this week and it is exceeding my expectations. love.

spring break begins

i was a little nervous going into this week. madelyn is on spring break, mason has been fussy all week, i have been sick, it going to rain for several days, and i have several meetings and deadlines at work. but i am happy to report that today gave me a lot of hope for the week ahead.

it was sunny and on the warm side (60s) so i could open the glass sliding doors and let madelyn play outside while i worked. she spent almost the entire work day outside. she only came in for meals, snacks, and the times i needed to put mason down or get him up from a nap (she isn't allowed to be outside or alone with the dogs when i am upstairs). mason does not get to enjoy that same freedom and was glad that he could at least see and call the dogs over for an occasional kiss/lick. he is so cute just watching everything going on. the standing is kind of new and if he pulls too hard, the gate swings open and he ends up on his bottom.

while i prepared lunch the kids were watch a cartoon and when i saw mason's head pop-up i knew i needed to get the camera. aren't they cute?










mason didn't really take an afternoon nap so we were all together most of the day. madelyn spent hours blowing bubbles for the dogs to chase. she also drew with chalk, played in the sandbox, and kicked around a ball. she has so much fun playing with the dogs outside. and i am so thankful for the safe play while i work. it helps me not feel guilty having to keep her inside on a nice day. she crashed as soon as she sat down on the couch while i was making dinner. she does that every now and then when she doesn't take a nap for a few days. she just can't get over that 4 or 5 o'clock hump if she has the chance to close her eyes.

we had to wake her up from a very deep sleep around 7 so that she could get a shower before bed. she was very, very dirty and had been requesting a shower instead of a bath since yesterday. after a thorough shower she went straight to bed without dinner; at her request.

now we will see how we fare the rest of the week as the rain moves in... love.

happy easter!

as you can see madelyn was very happy to find eggs hidden in the house. we only hid 6 eggs, but when madelyn had an egg hunt at school on wednesday, "mrs. wolff said, 'only 3 eggs!'" apparently this was a really big deal at school and was mentioned by several members of the staff so i had a feeling that it might impede our own egg hunt. once she got to number 4 though she didn't want to stop and was still looking on monday morning in case she might have missed one.

i wasn't able to get a picture of her with her basket because she found it and started going through it while i was feeding mason. there just wasn't the chance for a nice picture. and then mason was just too uninterested in his to get a nice one of him with his first easter basket. i picked this picture to post because madelyn is prostrate with grief over the fact that we won't let her take everything out of mason's basket and he won't take anything out. she found that to be extremely frustrating and unfair.

several previously 'uncared for' toys made a return in the easter baskets. much to my surprise, madelyn remembered every one of them. there was a moment of disappointment when she realized that the cookie monster she had lost was now mason's. this is one i couldn't believe she remembered because she barely touched it more than five times in two years and hadn't had it since last summer. thankfully, she got over it very quickly.

in the afternoon, madelyn and i (and mason) made easter crosses (thanks, uncle brad and aunt abby).

then daddy was so nice to take the kids to the park so that i could get some sleep. i was finally able to get a little rest so that i could finally get over this illness! and daddy really, really went above and beyond. he let me rest/sleep almost all afternoon and evening while he scrubbed down the kitchen, took care of the kids, and worked on a fussy mason until almost midnight. i woke up feeling like a new person this morning. thanks, matt. you did something for me that i didn't deserve, just like jesus. love.

"they match!"

one of madelyn's gifts in the easter packages was a new horse from me-ma (her great-grandma, my grandma). she knew instantly that it was for her and loved that it had curious george on it!

when she went to put it away in her room with her other easter gifts on saturday night she realized that it matched the other horse me-ma had sent when grandma came to visit.

"they match! they match! i need to take a picture with my camera. mom, where is my camera?"

of course they needed to pose in front of the fireplace where all important pictures are taken. here are two of the pictures from her session. love.

grandparents' easter

we decided to do the easter gifts from grandparents on saturday night because we had a pretty good feeling that their gifts would outshine the easter baskets we had prepared for easter day. after we got home from church we let madelyn rip into it.

madelyn could hardly contain her excitement over stickers, bunnies, candy, and other fun toys and accessories. the grandparents get so excited. our kids sure are spoiled.

i think mason was a little overwhelmed by all the new items and madelyn excitement. although it could have been that it was getting so close to bedtime and that he hadn't really had much of a nap that afternoon.

he was very happy with his cards (he had one in each hand) and carrot bat. (and, yes, it is the same carrot bat that madelyn got on an easter past.)

madelyn hurriedly put her loot away so that she could play with it the next day since it was bed time. sad to say that she did not make this same choice on sunday night and the majority of these items are now packed away in our basement. sigh. love.

rainy day

this morning was rainy but we went out to run errands anyway. we were sort of using today as a belated birthday since i was too sick to celebrate on tuesday. mason couldn't wait to start the day and greeted me at 5:45am. as early as that was, it was the latest he has slept all week. madelyn joined us about 45 minutes or an hour later and daddy got to sleep until 8:30 (that was my plan because i don't see the point in both of us being tired and i have to nurse mason anyway).

the plus side to having kids that get up so early is that we can get a jump on our day. i had everything prepped, packed, and the kids dressed and ready by the time daddy got up. he and i got ready quickly and we were pulling into einstein bagels a few minutes past 9. i must say that it is a lot easier to go there at 9 on a saturday than 10. i love starting my saturday with a fresh everything bagel!

it was raining pretty well when we left and madelyn had this to say when she saw people running in the parking lot to get out of the rain:

and since it is the first saturday of the month, our stops today included the kids' workshop at home depot to make a butterfly house. madelyn gets very excited about going to home depot "to build something" and as she gets older she participates in a more focused way. you can see that she was extremely pleased with her handiwork.

after naps (madelyn and mason's, not mine as planned - mason thought that i would like to stay awake with him instead for a while instead of nap myself) we went to church. it was packed! i am working the toddler room for one of the morning services and am wondering how it is even going to be manageable after seeing all the kids in madelyn's class tonight. she had a wonderful time though so it must have gone well. she was very proud of the hat she made and would not remove it for our attempt at pictures while we were all dressed and presentable.

i need to get to sleep so that i can get up with mason in the morning. love.

good friday

i got some cute pictures of mason tonight when we went to the park after dinner and had to share. daddy was able to get home a little early tonight so we made the most of the extra time before bed. madelyn was disappointed that some light rain put an end to our walk around the neighborhood.

by the way, mason's shirt isn't just because mason is cute, it is matt's philosophy on life. love.