She smiled, and either blew me a kiss—or signed thank you.

Rachel doesn’t really talk. For a couple days, she said “Out” a lot. She has managed to hold onto “Uh ohs!” whenever she sees something on the ground. But her signs are really picking up. She’s gotten really good at Thank you, and also learned please, apple, baby and:

Rachel, banana.

I also love how she signs music:

The “official signs”: banana, music.

We’re just happy to be done with teething. For now.

She has also discovered that walking isn’t just something you have to do when Mommy and Daddy make you walk between them, and she is now taking up to 4 or 5 steps away from furniture to get to toys or to get around her siblings.

Today we had an adventure. We have a trumpet in a case on the edge of our tub in our room. It’s pretty secure there, but today Rachel was trying to pull it down. I was worried she’d hurt herself, so I tried to move it. But when I picked up the case, it opened (it’s broken) and the trumpet fell out.

Right on her face.

She has a little cut below one eye, which might also develop into a black eye. This is what I get for trying to keep my child from hurting herself: I get to hurt her instead. Great.

Par for the course in a pretty crappy day. The older two begin every other sentence with “Mom.” Mom mom MOM mOM MoM mOM Mom mom MOM mOM MoM. “Mom, can I have some milk?”

“It’s right by Dad.”

“Oh. . . . Mom, could I have some milk?”

“No.”

weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth

In fact, the one who probably needs me the most is least demanding:

I told them today to stop saying my name. Unfortunately, this didn’t end the requests, though Hayden did “take out the ‘mom.’”

Thanks, son.

What do you think? Is this something they outgrow, or can I work on them with this?

This morning, Rachel used the couch to stand up for the first time! This is her last week, using the rocking chair (also the true first):

She’s still growing, but not quite as fast as she used to be. She was almost average sized at 4 months (a first for one of my children!), but at 6 (really 7) months, she was closer to the 35th percentile in weight. (Height was at the 98th percentile, but since she’s not abnormally long/tall, the doctor and I think that was probably a mis-measure.)

Rebecca is growing, too! She’s officially two and a half today. Lately she seems to be speaking much more clearly. For example, she doesn’t say “pea’ bu’ saas” but “peadut butter sammatch.” She still doesn’t say her r’s, favoring y’s and w’s instead. (“Diapehy” is a favorite of mine.)

She started having serious problems with bedhead, so I tried to get her to use scrunchies. If I did her hair “wike Tinkie Behww!” or to match mine (“We matsh?”), she was excited to let me touch her hair (a first!). I got her a few scrunchies at the dollar store last week, and she lets me do her hair almost every day now.

Hayden is learning new words. He likes to sound out words often these days (Last night: “G-g-g-gum. G! Gummmmm. M!”). He loves preschool, especially when it’s our turn to teach/host. He’s also experimenting with more photography (revolving around his latest favorite toy) and self-portraiture.

Warning: extreme closeup!

I fear I’ve created a monster, though: last week, I showed him the folder of Internet bookmarks I had just for him. I showed him how to open the browser. I showed him which link (of the 2-3) led to PBS Kids games. And now all he wants to do is play on the computer! (We have a few rules, of course: he has to ask first and get off whenever we tell him to.) It’s a little annoying during a lot of the day, but makes for a quieter quiet time. (And Rebecca happily taking naps again is helping with that, too!)

I love that they’re growing and discovering new things ad getting more independent, but I’m always sad to feel their early childhood slipping away.

What milestones have your kids hit recently?

One of my favorite resources is kellymom. I came across a page called Are mothers supposed to love breastfeeding 24 hours a day?, and some of the thoughts there made me think of more than just breastfeeding:

Our culture has become so addicted to the concept that we are supposed to only do what makes us happy or brings us immediate joy, that we lose a lot of the good stuff along the way–pride in accomplishment, joy in fulfilling a commitment, feeling of achievement through meeting a goal. I don't think this means people are more selfish today than they were in the past, I just think they have been taught to have different expectations about what they are supposed to feel and how they should respond to those feelings.

How do you think we can re-learn how to “respond to those feelings”? Can we help our children learn a better way?

I hope it goes without saying that my house is a little trashed, and I’m just glad the other two are getting along really well these days.

I’m handling it okay, actually. I like holding her, and she’s not that heavy, and usually I can sit down while I’m doing it. We have a television, and it won’t kill the kids if they watch it. I’m used to living in my messy house and raising the next generation of couch potatoes . Plus, in a few weeks, Rachel should be able to spend more than two hours a day out of my arms. (I realize, of course, there is no guarantee here, but I’ll keep hoping.)

My arms do get a little tired, of course—I do look forward to Ryan coming home so I can get up and do something. And that, I think, is the major drawback: I can’t get anything else done.

Naturally, I have a long list of things I’d like to do, not the least of which is stop watching so much television, but also feed myself and the rest of our family, vacuum for the first time in *mumblemumbleweeks*, and, say, use the bathroom. (Reading and writing are high on my list, too, but a little less necessary, I guess.) (A little.) Holding a baby, even one that can often be held comfortably with one arm, makes it hard to do much of anything.

But it’s okay. It’s okay if Rachel cries for a few minutes while I use the bathroom, or make sandwiches. And it’s okay, too, if I don’t accomplish everything that I’d really like to beyond those basics—these are precious days, and frankly, I’m already doing enough. I’m raising three kids and trying to meet their needs. And if right now, that’s all I can squeeze into a day, it’s okay.

At least, I’m trying to convince myself it is .

What do you think? Do you ever have unrealistic expectations for yourself? What do you do to try to fix that?

(Happy anniversary, Ryan!)

On the other hand, you also realize that the good times—the first smiles, the intent study of your hairline, the incredible cuteness of tiny toes and feet and hands—will be gone equally fast. And you look at all the adorable things your older kids are doing, and you can’t begin to capture them all.

Personally, I wish I could get down all the new words Rebecca learns every day—she’s become an amazing mimic and can string together up to 5 words. I wish I could list all the words she knows, but I doubt I could recall more than a quarter of her vocabulary. She’s also learning to count and say the alphabet (and she won’t even be two for two more weeks—the benefits of having an older sibling who gets counting and alphabet books).

I wish I could record all Hayden is learning, too—how he puts things together, physically and mentally. He’s learning new concepts and words every day, too (though he already knows so much that it’s not the exponential growth Rebecca is seeing). He loves to run and play outside, and he likes to read books.

Rachel, of course, doesn’t do a whole lot, but I find myself wanting to hang on to these little moments the most with her. She’s already grown so much that I can just feel the rest of her babyhood slipping through my fingers.

Just thinking about the things I’m “missing” because I don’t have something recording my kids’ every action makes me a little anxious, reminding me that I’m missing out more. But just being aware that today is slipping away makes me pay more attention, even if I can’t leap up and get the video camera and coax a repeat of some spontaneous cute thing.

And it reminds me to keep paying attention—to treasure these little moments as they’re happening—to live in the present.

How do you treasure today?

Photo by Erik Fitzpatrick

I was sick before I realized I was pregnant. It was a convenient form of morning sickness—sweets were repulsive. Veggies and fruits were all I could eat. (Got over that pretty quickly, though.) And if I ate, the morning sickness obeyed and I felt okay.

I found out I was pregnant the week of my mother’s birthday. I decided to save the surprise for that day, Saturday. I called my parents’ house, but no one answered. I called my mom’s cell phone. No answer. I figured my dad was out, so I called my youngest sister, who still lived at home. She didn’t answer, but my next youngest sister texted me back.

Dad’s in the hospital. He passed out this morning. We’re waiting to hear what’s wrong.

It took most of the day to find out what had happened and that my dad was mostly okay (he made a full recovery and is fine now). I finally tracked down a phone number for his room and called him. I was planning to tell my mother first, but she wasn’t there, so I told my dad. I called my mom at home next and told her, then my sisters. We needed the good news that day.

It was just the beginning of hospital visits for this pregnancy.

Since my last OB passed away a year before this, I changed doctors. At my first visit, they performed an ultrasound—the baby wasn’t due in mid-May as I’d calculated: the baby was due June 9. It should be illegal to prolong a pregnancy three weeks, especially in the midst of morning sickness!

My new doctor didn’t have a blood lab on site, so I had to go to the hospital for the routine blood tests, including the quad screen. I visited my parents for Christmas. While I was there, I got a call from my doctor. We played a few rounds of phone tag, and the nurses said the doctor wanted to talk to me himself.

Which, of course, means something is wrong.

And it was and it wasn’t. The baby had an elevated risk of Down syndrome. It was a week before I came home and visited with the doctor. I spent that week trying not to worry (because worrying wouldn’t change anything, right?) It turned out that “elevated risk” meant a 1 in 132 chance. Less than one percent. And this test is notorious for false positives.

But we went to the appointment with the perinatologist (at the hospital. Again.) anyway. They didn’t see any signs of Down syndrome in the baby, but they discovered something else—instead of the normal three blood vessels in the umbilical cord, the baby only had two blood vessels.

Then, of course, they laid out all the risks and had to act as if the worst was happening. A two-vessel cord (single umbilical artery or SUA) is correlated with chromosomal defects. Down syndrome is a chromosomal defect. Therefore, we couldn’t rule out Down syndrome without amniocentisis. (Big needle, big fun.) (We opted not to do the amnio, especially after our research found no correlation between SUA and Down syndrome specifically.)

Additionally, SUA can lead to intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR. Lots of letters!), where the baby can’t grow well in the womb. My doctor said that if the baby went three weeks without growing, we would deliver the baby as early as 33 weeks. Induced labor, c-sections and premature babies are my three biggest fears for pregnancies, so this is exactly what I wanted to hear. Not.

So every three to four weeks, I got to haul two kids to the hospital, through admitting, to the radiology office. Wait. Entertain kids. (Okay, to be fair, helpful neighbors did watch them for three of the visits, so I only had to take them half the time. And Ryan came to every ultrasound, so I wasn’t alone.) We’d decided to let the baby’s gender be a surprise—but monthly ultrasounds make that a little more challenging than normal. And then in the last month of pregnancy, I had weekly nonstress tests and amniotic fluid indices (measuring the fluid in the womb via ultrasound), to make sure the baby was okay. I had up to three doctor/hospital appointments a week at the end. Hooray.

Rachel passed every exam, chose not to be an exhibitionist, and ended up being my largest baby to date. I can’t wait to see the insurance charges. (And neither can the hospital, apparently. After waiting five months to bill us for the quad screen that started all this trouble, they’re now claiming that our insurance isn’t paying on charges made six weeks ago and we have to pay it all. Yeah, right. But in addition to the health concerns, we had so much trouble with a new insurance company that it stresses me out thinking about it still.)

Next time: labor and delivery!

Okay, so maybe I started before the weekend…

Rachel Diana

 
5 June
6 lbs 9 oz

Everyone’s doing fine!

(And no, you didn’t miss anything—Rachel had us pretty concerned during my pregnancy, so I didn’t mention it here.)

When you have two, you want them to do that together.

And some other fun pictures from the park today:

Shots 1, 2, 3

Hayden dancing on the stage and singing his ABCs

What have you done to help prepare your kids to take on the world—including giving them a sibling to work side-by-side with?

“Becca do not want to be wiped.”

I agreed with his astute assessment.

“You not wipe her?”

“I have to wipe her,” I explained. “She’ll get hurt if I don’t.” Apparently we’ve had the diaper rash discussion enough times before that he accepted this without argument. But after a moment, he offered one more piece of advice to help us avoid future encounters of the #2 kind:

“Becca, stop pooping.”

What incredibly logical arguments did/do your toddlers or preschoolers make?