Decision made.

My sis got the tutu for Bear. It is SOOO cute! I am one of those people who is full of great ideas but usually lacks the follow through. SO I decided not to make the skirt myself. Well, when we had a notice stating that there was a package waiting Bear in the leasing office, and after the sweet glow of excitement on her face about having a package addressed to her, how could I make her wait over 2 weeks to open it? I was probably more excited to see it because I knew what was inside!

It turns out that the tutu works well with her gymnastics leotard. And a magic clothes hanger. ;)


Here she was, bouncing on the furniture immediately after opening:

Thanks, Bec and crew! Oh, and Miss Priss Tutus!

mommy etiquette?

Bear and I went to the playground yesterday. She made a beeline for the toddler swing, barely arriving before a mom and her young toddler who wanted to ride it. The Mom said to go ahead, so I pushed her a few times, then told her that since she is big enough to ride a regular swing, she needed to share and give the little boy a turn. She willingly agreed to get down and chose to head to the twisty slide. When she got to the top, another girl was climbing up the slide. I asked Bear to wait to go down until the other girl finished. The girl stayed put. I told her that other kids wanted to use the slide, too, and she needed to slide down. She climbed up. "Get out of my way!" she said to my daughter. She slid down again, and her friend also tried to cut in front of Bear. Meanwhile, Bear was astonished and frightened, near tears. The other girl was STILL on the slide. "You need to learn to share. Get down and give the other kids a turn." I told her in my "playground monitor" voice. Of course, it was too late for Bear. She had already turned around and ran to the steps. "Mommy, she scared me!" We proceeded to the big kid swings for a few minutes.

Normally, the other parents are around prompting their kids to use good manners. Apparently this 5-ish year old's Mom was too busy socializing to realize her daughter was a bully and slide hog. I half expected her, whoever she was, to come up and address me for scolding her child, but nope, no sign of any intervention of any type.

Later on, Bear decided to try again. The bully's friend was up there around the same time, and let my daughter go first. Bear looked at her as though she expected to be bullied again, but the girl insisted she have a turn. (Apparently her manners returned when the other girl was not around.) She managed to go down the slide successfully.

A few minutes earlier, I had just taught my almost 3 year old daughter to share her beloved swing with a younger child. Then, she waited her turn patiently at the slide, only to be scared by a slightly older kid who apparently didn't listen to the times her parents had tried to teach her playground etiquette.

So, when do you let kids work things out on their own, and when do you step in and "parent" other people's kids?

Thank you!

Thanks for all your prayers and well-wishes! My Dad brought his laptop to the hospital tonight, so I am able to check comments. I'm sorry I don't have time to respond to everyone individually.

I am very tired, but things are going well overall. Becca summarized things very well. Our little guy is precious. He has been a sleepy-head today, not nursing quite as much, but I'm told that is normal following "boy surgery."

I thought I would share today's quips:

The anesthesiologist came in to check on me. "You're doing well? No back pain from the epidural?" he asked. "I feel great, I didn't actually get the epidural." Apparently I was on his list since I had signed the consent forms just in case. He congratulated me and and moved on to the next patient. I did tell him that by the time I had decided to ask for it I Was already dilated to 8cm and figured it wouldn't kick in in time to help. And I am very glad, still a little shocked, that I was able to make it through. I am normally a wimp with very little tolerance for pain, but with an awesome support team including my beloved. And if you have seen the business of being born, do not let it scare you into thinking all hospitals are unsupportive of goals for natural childbirth. If you make up your mind to try it, your doctors and nurses may just surprise you... especially if you bring a supportive spouse and doula along for the ride.

We let Hannah hold her little brother in the hospital bed, with pillow support, of course. She lifted up her shirt with the hand that was not around her brother, and stated, "I feed Brandon milk from my breasts."

Let the adventures in parenting two begin...

Another Tackle in Progress

"word scramble"

I asked Bear if we should paint the letters green to match her name above her bed, or blue.
"Brother likes blue!" she responded.

Meanwhile, Bear tackled her own painting project, mixing the two colors.
And miraculously, she did not get any blue paint on her shirt.

Wordless Wednesday

23 weeks and 4 days belly shot
4/27/08

kissing the belly

do i have to kiss it again, mom?

Wordless Wednesday (almost)

(My friend Gina took this pic of our girls and their friend as we left the park today.)

There's one less tulip in the flowerbed than when she stepped outside.
I just planted more daisy seeds so she'll have plenty to pick this summer. If they grow.

Tackle It Tuesday: Operation Nursery, Phase Two

It's been a while since I tackled something other than dishes, laundry, or gardening. In case you are wondering, Phase One was turning the office into the nursery, which happened before I became a blogger. With child #2 on the way, we made the decision that Baby Bear will share her room with her new sibling. Most of our family lives out of town, so we need that guest bedroom. Plus, I need the place to dump Mt. Laundry until I get around to folding it or hubby gets exasperated with me and folds it himself. (That happens a lot.) Hubby also uses it as his office when he works from home. As you can see, we simply do not have a spare room. Well, my parents had a twin mattress, boxspring and frame to get rid of. Since we decided to keep the guest bedroom in tact, Baby Bear needed a big girl bed. This tackle started yesterday morning, and today I moved the stack of boxes of clothes into the not-so-spare room. The quilt was made by hubby's gramma for his high school graduation. I think it's too flowery for him, but it looks great in Bear's room!

Before:

During:

After:

Just don't ask me to show you what the inside of the closet looks like. That will be a future tackle, or series of tackles.

disconnected

my computer is dead... battery is dead, and the cord's short which required us to position it "just so" in order to use or charge the thing turned into a full fledged fire hazard when it sparked just after monday's post. i'm glad to see the post went through.

if you need to reach me, hopefully you have my phone #. i may try to go to the library, but i'm not sure if checking e-mail there will really happen with a 2 year old..


so.... quick baby update. HB was 144 BPM at today's visit. My OB had to rush off to deliver a baby. I forget she does do that for other women, too. ;) U/S has been scheduled for April Fool's Day (no joke). I gained 3 lbs since my last appt. Baby Bear got to hear the heartbeat, too. She was more impressed by the toys in the waiting room. But for the past 3 days she has been saying there is a brother in mommy's belly. Is God telling her something we don't know... we'll find out. She had previously been consitently switching between predicting boy or girl, but for 3 days her prediction has been the same. Hopefully she won't be too diappointed if it's a sister. She'll get over it, if she is.

So, see you when I get back. If you need to reach me,e-mail my sis, sis's in law, or mil if you don't have my phone # already. Hopefully I won't be offline for too long.

hasta luego...

let's compare

1st pregnancy (baby bear)

• beef aversion
• puked several times a day during the 1st 2 trimesters
• lost weight before gaining ANY
• sis predicted a boy

this pregnancy

• beef cravings
• chicken aversion comes and goes
• morning sickness began around 8 weeks, but (so far) has hit no more than 3 times a day, usually just once or twice
• gaining slowly
• predictions, anyone? ;-)
  

almost wordless wednesday(it's hard to practice yoga with a monkey on your back)

for more ww posts, visit 5 minutes for mom or the ww hq.

our little wren(?) on our porch

bird's nest

chrysalis or caccoon?

Reaching for the sole remaining yellow leaf...

Wordless Wednesday

Our thanks to Dotson Studios
for their beautiful work!

(click on individual photos to see them more clearly)

in case you were wondering...

12 feet of 1/8" gold ribbon is the perfect amount needed to hang 20 glass bulb ornaments.

My tree was missing something. Though it did not look bad, there were too many bare spots which kept calling to the ornaments buried in the closet across the room. And those ornaments called back, "save us! We're lonely in here! It's dark! Let there be light!" But the thought of actually hanging ornaments with hooks disturbed me. My toddler is curious. It's part of her spirit, and I am glad. But I felt that by using hooks I would be asking for trouble.

So when I made my trek to Joann's yesterday, I browsed the ribbon... both the holiday display and the standard aisles. Finally, after perusing all my favorite aisles (scrapbooking, floral, yarn, crafts, Christmas and ribbon- in that order), I found the perfect braided thread on a spool in the ribbon aisle. And after we put Bear to bed at the late hour of 9:30 tonight (Daddy came home from being out of town, and naptime was late this afternoon), I decided that since I had to vacuum the dry cereal off the couch and top steps, I might as well see if my ribbon did the trick and be able to vacuum the trimming from the ribbon. I still have 1 box of smaller gold balls, and am undecided. I think some of them would accent the tree nicely, too, but I am out of ribbon for now. At least I found a way to safely adorn my tree. (Unless my daughter pulls down the tree and crushes ornaments in the process, as my friend's DD did last year.)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Scrapback... 11th page completed

Yesterday's tackle motivated me to scrap a page tonight. I was hoping to do more than one, but it took me longer than I had planned just to do this. You would think I took the time to measure my margins by how long it took, but I just eyeballed them. My adhesive tape runner is basically worthless, and since it's over a year old and I'm sure even hubby doesn't have that receipt, I can't take it back for an exchange. Thankfully I have other adhesives to work with, but still... "Money down the drain, Max," as Ruby would say. At this rate, I'll be done with Bear's 1st year scrapbook before she gets married. Maybe. Let's see... 11 pages in 2 years.... maybe not.

Wordless Wednesday: Autumn Stroll

November 2005, about 2 1/2 weeks old

Today:

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Wordless Wednesday: Child's Play