Quickie

I started this post earlier in the day and then got distracted by something. Now I'm too tired to put much effort into it. I am happy to report that Lila seems to be done with the fever this time around. Now I'm going to go snuggle with kitties.

Filling in the Middle

Now we've settled on a middle name, so The Boy has officially become Eli Sebastian Peeler. And no, Eli is not short for anything.

I'm 28 weeks pregnant, which puts me officially in my third trimester. I had another appointment with the doctor yesterday and will now be going in every two weeks. By this week, Eli weighs 2.25 pounds, which is about the same as a Chinese cabbage. Of course, my uterus is consistently measuring two weeks bigger than normal, so he could weigh more than that! He also measures 14.8 inches from the top of his head to his heels. (where do they come up with these measurements? 14.8? why not 14.773?)

Lila, sadly, has another fever. This one has been going since Friday or Saturday. We didn't take her temperature and discover that she was actually sick until Saturday afternoon, but upon reflection, I think she was probably sick on Friday afternoon as well. We went to the doctor today, where, I am happy to say, they did NOT take any blood or give her a catheter. They did send me home with a sterile cup and a lab slip though. Now I have to convince her to pee in the potty this evening.

Only missing the middle now

I'm pleased to announce that, as of this morning, our baby actually has a first name! The middle name is still open for debate, but he will be Eli _________ Peeler. At last! I can stop referring to him as The Boy! (Though I have grown rather fond of that nickname.) I was beginning to think we would still be debating names in the delivery room!

I'm also beginning to think that I'm going to be retired before I can finish typing out this post. My desk is right next to my bed and Lila has recently taken to getting up on the bed and chattering/making constant requests while I'm trying to do anything on the computer. If only she could understand that I would be done in half the time if she weren't distracting me...

She has also just made the discovery that there's no one to stop her from disobeying when she's alone in a room. This week has been filled with things like drawing on her arms, scooping food onto the table, writing with pens on inappropriate surfaces, pulling books off of shelves, and generally playing with things that she knows she is not supposed to touch. I've been trying to teach her that she needs to make good choices even when no one is around. And to myself I say, "Yeah. Good luck with that."

Fizzing Whizbees

As of Saturday, I'm 27 weeks pregnant. Only 84 days to go! The Boy is really starting to get big. That means I'm really starting to feel pregnant. He weighs almost two pounds - that's about the size of a head of cauliflower - and he's about 14.5 inches with his legs extended. Unless he's larger or smaller, which is always possible. He supposedly sleeps and wakes at regular intervals now.

So, I was in the bathroom this morning, fixing my hair, and the house was relatively quiet. As I stood there, I became aware of a little fizzing noise. I started tracking it down and had settled on Doug's toothbrush when the noise stopped. I found it slightly alarming that Doug's toothbrush was making spontaneous fizzing noises, but what can you do?!?

Well, thankfully, I found out this afternoon that I was wrong about the source. After my shower, I was in much the same situation and heard the noise again. This time it lasted long enough for me to track it down and verify the source. It was coming from the battery pack that was hanging out of a rooster-shaped paper lantern on the counter. Still slightly alarming, but at least the toothbrush isn't possessed!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Well, this is crazy... Doug is not going on his business trip after all! For weeks, I've been stressing out about it and then, three days before he's supposed to leave, somebody at Dell decides that they need to save money. They paged him yesterday morning to tell him that he can't go after all. I'm relieved, of course, but it's a bit of a mental shift because I'd been preparing myself for his absence for so long!

On a completely different topic, Lila has started having "bad dreams". And boy are they strange. The first one (that we know about) involved a bad noise, apples, and flying. The girl talked about apples for days afterward because we have a few apple trees in our backyard and this dream reminded her that they'll start putting out fruit soon. She is beside herself with excitment over that one.

Then, a couple of nights ago, she comes into our room in the early morning saying, "I don't like the monkey bite me." Umm... what? It took a few times to understand her because, (a) we were half-asleep, (b) she had a pacifier in her mouth, and (c) what she was saying made no sense. We finally determined that it was another dream, this one involving a girl monkey who was laughing and biting her.

This morning, it was something about a dinosaur biting her, a dog and a kitty, and her hands being dirty. This should prove to be an entertaining phase...

Stretchy Pants

The Boy now weighs about a pound and two-thirds and measures 14 inches. That measurement, from head to heel, is about the length of an English hothouse cucumber. That is different than your average cucumber, which is shorter. His weight will more than triple between now and birth as he rapidly puts on baby fat. I'm curious to find out whether he'll be on the small end of average, like his sister, or ginormous, like his father was at birth.

He's slightly perturbed with me today because I'm wearing maternity jeans with a thick elastic band around the waist. It's not all that tight, but apparently it's tight enough for him to feel it. He keeps squirming and kicking at it. I seem to remember Lila doing the same thing when I wore some shorts with a similar waist band. Sorry, son, but occasionally I've got to wear something besides Stretchy Pants.

Lila just woke up from her nap and she's knocking on the inside of her bedroom door. This is something she's started doing recently and I don't get it. She just feels the need to knock sometimes. If you ignore her, she'll come out on her own. It is fun to go and knock back to see what happens though. She'll either keep knocking and you can play a little game or she'll open the door to see who's there.

the new 'hood

I don't know what song this is or where she learned it, but Lila is walking around, singing, "Shake it to the left. Shake it to the right." Hmm...

This is completely unrelated, but I just realized that we have not had a party at our new house! We've had some leadership meetings and had people over to hang out, but no real parties. Clearly, this must be remedied. Now I have to think of a reason to have a party. Think. Think. Think. I've got it! We'll have a Daylight Savings Time party! [you think i'm kidding...]

I'm trying to get a neighborhood Bible study set up here in our new 'hood too. There is a neighborhood Yahoo group and I've put out a couple of calls for other moms who'd be interested. I've only heard from one other mom who's both interested and available, but I've gotten a couple of replies that are like, "I'm not a mom, but..." So I'm thinking of expanding it to an evening group open to all women.

For someone who's introverted and likes to spend time alone, I sure do put a lot of effort into trying to get extra people into my house. Interesting.

NEVER refer to a pregnant woman as 'fat'.

You know, I'm pregnant. Every day, all the time. But sometimes I really feel pregnant. Today's not so bad, but last night I felt like a tick. Seriously! And I'm nowhere near done with the growing yet! You know that look that pregnant women get toward the end of their pregnancy? In those last few weeks they start to just ooze weariness and they wear a look that says, "I am so done with this."

I'm convinced that that feeling is all part of God's plan. Labor and delivery and having a newborn are highly stressful and frightening things. But by the time the baby is ready to be born, you don't care anymore. You are so ready to get that kid out of your body that you'd be willing to go through anything! You may question why God is trying to kill you with this thing that people keep referring to as a Miracle, but you aren't worrying (too much) about what you can't control!

Do me a favor and DON'T remind me of this fantastic bit of insight when I start to have That Look. It's really something that can only be appreciated in retrospect.

Please don't meet the Spartans.

So, Friday was my Monthly Mystery Movie Night. Same old thing - I went to the theater, got a ticket to the latest show (before 11 p.m.), and went into it with no idea what to expect. This month was a total bust. The movie, which I had never even heard of, was 'Meet the Spartans'. It was a spoof of '300' and it was just... stupid. And not in a funny way.

I sometimes appreciate stupid humor. I saw 'Balls of Fury' and thought it was hilarious! Extremely juvenile, but hilarious. I got so disgusted with this movie that I left after less than half an hour. I wanted to leave after five minutes, but I made myself stick around to see if it got any better. I did pay $8.75 to see it, after all. Ugh! I had much more fun watching 'Groundhog Day' with Doug on Saturday!

On a more pleasant note, The Boy is up to about 13.5 inches now, head to heel. He was using some of those inches to try and push his way out through my side yesterday, but it didn't work. He weighs a pound and a half. So much bigger than the speck he started out as, but still so bitty! If you'd like a food to compare his weight to this week, try a rutabaga. A long, lean rutabaga. Or a baby.

I don't talk about much besides my kids, do I?

While Doug was in the shower this morning, Lila woke me up by crawling into bed and trying to stick a pacifier in my mouth. That was a unique experience...

A little while after that, I had her on the bed with me and was "eating her belly". Through her hysterical laughter, she said, "No, I'm not tasty! I'm spicy!" And then, "Put my shirt down. I'm too spicy!" It was hilarious!

The Boy is growing steadily in there. I find it ironic that he weighs about 1.25 lbs, but I have gained more than 20! How is that fair? He's almost a foot long, which is about the length of an ear of corn (before it's peeled and cut, i'm thinking). If we could see him right now, he'd look pretty lean, but he'll start filling out fast over the next few weeks.

We still haven't picked out a name, hence my references to 'The Boy'. Lila is sticking with her opinion that we should just name him Boy... and that may be what happens if Doug and I can't agree on something soon! I could give you a list of the names that one of us has suggested and the other has rejected, but what's the point in that, really?

Aquababy

Today was Lila's first day in her new swim class, Aquababies! It's just her, three other little girls, and the teacher. No mommy in the water! She did a fabulous job - really, I've been gushing since we left the pool. I took nearly 100 photos, so you can expect to be seeing them for a few days. :)

Lots to say for a change

I come armed with four new stories today, so this could be a bit long.

#1: I mentioned before that our friends, Chip and Sara, had a baby last week. On Saturday, we went to bring them a meal and meet little Jace. I held him for a little while and Lila just kept going on and on about how little he was. "He's so little!" "He's tiny!" "He's itty bitty!" My favorite was, "He's got itty bitty toesies!"

Then Lila announced that she wanted to hold Jace. We got her up on the couch and I put him in her lap (with a little support for his head). It was painfully cute because she was being so sweet with him. She rubbed on his little belly and patted him and kept talking about how little he was. Since then she has been talking about how she's going to hold "her" baby like she did Baby Jace.

#2: Every day, Lila and I have what I call 'Bible Time'. I read a little devotional to her from a preschool devotional book I have and then I read a bit from the Bible. Each day's devotion is about a particular subject. A couple of days ago, the topic was 'comfort'. I said to Lila, "Did you know that Jesus is always with you to comfort you when you are hurt?"

She respoded with, "Yeah! [something something] Jesus helped me puke! [something something] And Jesus helped Mommy and Daddy puke!" Okay, yes, it was very funny to hear a 2-year-old saying that Jesus helped her puke, but the understanding behind this answer just blew me away! She understood that Jesus was there to help her when she was sick.

And she was also able to transfer that understanding to knowing that Jesus helped Mommy and Daddy when we were sick too. And in her little mind, the puking might have been Jesus' way of helping her feel better because I'm sure her tummy felt a lot better after she was done! She was also able to answer both of the 'comprehension questions' that I asked her after we read the accompanying story!

#3: I have this habit of kicking people in my sleep. Right after Doug and I got married, I woke us both up a couple of times by kicking him. We are pretty sure that I still do it, but we just sleep through it. Today, Lila and I were both taking a nap (in our own respective beds) and I was having this strange dream that was no doubt reflecting my anxiety over Doug's upcoming two-week trip to Asia.

In the dream, Doug told me that he was leaving later that afternoon to go to Houston on business for a couple of days. I was upset because he had left me no time to find someone to come stay with me. Then I come home and find that he's given our house key to a Chinese coworker who was in town for a few days - without telling me. I was completely ticked off and waiting for him to come home so I could gripe at him.

He finally did come home (we're still in the dream here) and apparently there was another person there, who might have been some representation of one of my brothers. This guy decided it would be funny to put a cold carton of milk against my back. When he did, I turned on him and started trying to strangle him, literally. I was fighting to get my hands around his neck and I think Doug was trying to stop me.

I'm guessing that hew as behind me, trying to pull me away and I was trying to kick him and strangle the other guy at the same time. Anyway, what happened in real life was that I actually did kick my leg out behind me and made contact with my poor, sleeping cat. It woke me up and I felt so bad, but I couldn't help laughing too. Poor Charlie! All he knew was that we were peacefully napping together and then I hauled off and kicked him! It didn't offend him enough to make him leave though.

#4: I was sitting at the computer a while ago and Lila came up next to me. She was holding my hands and looking up at me and I looked back down at her. She just stared at me for a minute and then said, "I really like you." I almost died it was so sweet!

We all need a massage.

Another seven days has passed and now I'm 23 weeks pregnant. For the record, I'm still not sure on some days that I'm ready to have another child. Nonetheless, there is a baby boy in there who is 11 inches long and weighs just over a pound. That is, apparently, as much as a large mango weighs, but I'm pretty sure that he doesn't look like a mango.

They say that The Boy can feel my movements now and encourage dancing around. At the moment, I just feel like taking a nap, but thanks for the suggestion. Apparently, the baby's skin is transparent and reddish. That sounds rather odd to me. As long as he's pink when he comes out, then it's fine. Or he could be a kitty when he comes out. Blood vessels in his lungs are developing to prepare him for breathing, but his lungs won't be fully developed for many more months. So keep cookin', Kid!

Hehehe... Lila just crawled up into our massage chair and is pushing buttons on the remote, trying to turn it on. The funny part is that she doesn't want to lean back and have the massagers touch her. She wants to turn on the heat so that the massagers turn red, and then watch them move around under the fabric. Sometimes Cordy gets up in the chair, which I can only assume means that she wants a massage. However, she always leaves as soon as I turn it on. Odd.

Free at last...

I think it is finally gone. No one has had diarrhea or vomiting for over 24 hours now. I'm tempted to go around and coat the house in Lysol again, just for good measure. Whew! and Praise God! I can't believe that tomorrow is already Saturday again. I mean, wasn't it just Sunday? Oh, no no, that was a couple dozen vomits ago. My mistake. Okay, and I'll try not to use the words diarrhea or vomit, or any of their synonyms, for a long time.

I have fantastic news about Cordelia. She has finally learned a valuable lesson that we've been trying to teach her for roughly five years now. If you want attention, then you should come and get it. Pouting, in another room, in the dark, does not get you what you want. What you see in this photo is Cordy consenting to lay in Doug's lap and get scratches, rather than insisting that he follow her to her favorite spot in the floor. This is a big breakthrough for Cordy and we're quite proud of her.

I bought a cute little onesie for The Boy today. It has teddy bears on it and says, "One of a kind." I used to think that boys clothes were boring, but now that I'm shopping for them I find them to be excessively cute. I guess the beauty grows when you're contemplating what's going to be inside those clothes. And speaking of boys, it seems like everyone I know is having a one! I can think of one friend who just had a son and at least three people, including myself, who are pregnant with them. Obviously it's got something to do with the moon. Or the drugs in our water. Or cow hormones. Or maybe the aliens. (the ones from outer space, not other countries)

Other things

Things around here are still pretty disgusting, but I'm tired of talking about that. What else can I talk about? . . . Oh, our dear friends, Chip and Sara Reed, gave birth to a son this week! Hooray! Jace was born on Monday, January 14 at 8:12 p.m. He weighed in at 8 lbs 10 oz and 20.5" long. Baby, Mom and Dad are all healthy and doing well. I've seen a few photos and he's definitely cuter than your average newborn! Chubby, too!

Let's see. I don't have a lot of fun stories this week since we've been sick and have hardly left the house since the weekend... Oh, today is my step-dad's birthday. Happy Birthday, Frank!

We are supposed to be having a brief visit from Grammie starting tomorrow, but I just don't know if that will be happening. Since this illness is lingering in Lila, I just don't know if she's still contagious or not. I would really hate to pass this on to anyone else. Especially since Grammie will be heading on to visit the other grandbaby after she leaves here. I don't want to send the bug to them!

Well, obviously I can't get away from the topic of being sick, so I'm giving up. Goodbye.

Warning: This is gross

Wow. It has sucked to be us for the past few days. This is how it all went down. Lila threw up Sunday morning and early Monday morning. On Monday afternoon, Doug came home from work early because he was sick. By the time I went to bed that night, I was sick. He and I each spent approximately 7 hours with stuff coming out both ends (for me, at the same time) every 30 to 45 minutes.

Lila threw up again in the middle of the night Monday/Tuesday. During the day on Tuesday, Doug and I both felt horrible and completely exhausted and Lila mostly just felt like we were boring. Then she had a blowout on Tuesday evening. Apparently she threw up sometime in the night last night and then went back to bed without telling us. This morning she had another blowout and has been at it every couple of hours since then.

I do not ever want to be that sick again and I'm so paranoid about us passing this bug back around that I've been spraying things with Lysol and washing my hands obsessively. I've even been wearing latex gloves when I clean up Lila's poopsplosions. Hopefully, for everyone's sake, this illness will be done with our family soon!

Oh, and the bonus points go to Ellen for guessing the movie. It was The Wizard of Oz.

Much like yesterday

So, this is weird. I mentioned yesterday that Lila puked before church. She was then totally fine for the rest of the day (except for a weak appetite). Well, she did it again sometime early this morning! We don't even know when it happened. She came and woke Doug up around 4 a.m. saying she wanted her water. He went to her room to help her find it and discovered two different places where she'd thrown up. Ew!

And, naturally, she's been completely fine since then. I'm not worried about her or anything, but I do wish this would stop. We couldn't put her in the nursery at church yesterday and I had to skip going to the gym today because childcare rather frowns on being given a child who has recently puked. But anyway, enough about these gross things.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Doug's cell phone is dead. "It's not only merely dead. It's really most sincerely dead!" The battery still works, but the phone itself is no more. I think Doug was perusing EBay this morning, looking for another one. He called Cingular, but our phone warranty does not cover death by washing machine. Oh well.

* Bonus points if you can tell me what movie that quote was adapted from.

Somebody puked, but it wasn't the pregnant lady!

As I mentioned last time, I'm 22 weeks pregnant now. That leaves 126 days go to (119 if you account for the c-section). The Boy now looks like a miniature newborn -- and kicks and squirms like a miniature octopus. He checks in at 10.9 inches, which is the length of a spaghetti squash. He weighs almost one pound... more or less. Just a wrinkly little baby, growing away!

Poor Lila puked this morning, for no apparent reason. She was a little whiny from the time she got up, but that just happens sometimes. Shortly before church, while she and Doug were playing with Play Doh, she announced that her tummy felt funny and then threw up all over Doug. She hardly ate anything all day (until she ate an entire apple around 5 o'clock), but she hasn't thrown up again. Who knows...

The one who really suffered in this situation was Doug's cell phone. It was in the pocket of the jeans that got puked on and all of the dirty clothes got put right in the washer, so... yeah, Doug's cell phone is very clean. We are letting it dry out completely and will check tomorrow to see if it still works. Hee hee.

Nothing, really.

You know, I opened this post to give a baby update, but I just realized that I'll be hitting 22 weeks tomorrow and I'll have new and different information to share. So I'll wait until then (i get a lot of my 'helpful tidbits' from a weekly email i receive). Until then, you can look at this photo of Lila playing Guitar Hero. Shortly after this photo was taken, we spotted her standing up, with the guitar on, swaying to the music. It was so hilarious, but she stopped before we could get the video camera out. Naturally.

What that is?

Well, it's been a week, but Doug's still Doug, I'm still pregnant, and Lila's still nuts. Not that I expected any of those things to change. . . . Wow. I'm sitting here with my hands on the keyboard, but nothing is coming out. Plenty has happened in the past week, but I feel uninspired to describe any of it. Today has been a long one due to an extra dose of insanity from Lila.

Right now I'm hiding and waiting for Doug to get home so that she'll have someone else to follow around and talk to. She's started asking a lot more questions; her favorite one being, "What that is?" The really maddening part is this: if she doesn't like your answer, she'll just keep asking the same question over and over. And, even though she has no concept of time, she's suddenly started asking us what time it is.

She discovered this question on the way home from dinner a couple of nights ago. She started with, "What time is it?" Doug said, "6:41." She said, "What time is it, Mommy?" I said, "6:41." She said, "What time is it?" I said, "It's still 6:41." She said, "What time is it, Daddy?" This went on for a very long time. Actually, it was about one minute, but you'd be amazed at how many times we went through this in that one minute.

We tried explaining to her that it's the same time for everybody (at least everyone who was in the car at the time), but it didn't help. We then started answering with things like, "Time for you to stop asking that question." At some point, Doug resorted to pestering her with questions instead. "Lila, do you have a face?" "Lila, do you have a nose?" "Lila?" "Lila?"

She took the approach of just ignoring us. Funny, that doesn't work when I try it on her...