Alright alright this may be a bit overdue... as I did have an ultrasound on TUESDAY. This however is only Friday. It could be worse. Trust me it could be a lot worse. We are still dealing with the daylights savings induced sleep shake-up here in this household. Not to mention both myself and Ash had the flu all day today. Not one of our best days... although in all fairness, A is dealing with her issues with remarkable aplomb, it is MOMMY who has had the worst day ever. But then it is mommy who stays up to make sure that someone greets Daddy at the end of a long evening at work... and mommy who stays up with him for a little bit of adult time while he is winding down from work. It is also however mommy who wakes up with the baby in the morning. So I stayed up until 1:30 with my husband and got up at 6:30 with my daughter. My husband however slept until 10:15 AM and my daughter went down at 9:30 PM. This is the standard course for my days and I am starting to think as we progress further into this pregnancy that Dave my just have to deal with the household being asleep when he gets home. He doesn't like coming home to a quiet house... but as he is not willing to let me be the parent who sleeps in EVER, he may just have to deal with it.
So as I was saying A and I have both been struck with the flu and that makes for a somewhat miserable household. Especially as mom doesn't have the patience for just about anything and A is somewhat fussy because she feels bad too. Dave who wasn't sick left early for work... and I guess you can't blame him really... and because he was little help around the house and kept making comments as to my ability of surviving this illness in tones that I found offensive, I was frankly happy to see him go. At least with him gone I was just sick and dealing with a sick child... as opposed to sick and dealing with a sick child while also dealing with attitude. Honestly I don't know if it is all men or just mine, but there are days.
Ash has been steadily picking up new and different words. Today she used the word pinky. Yeah where did that one come from right... but I have been singing the " where is Thumbkin" song with her for a couple of weeks and apparently she has a liking for that particular finger. She also has mastered the use of Me and Mine. She really does use them correctly too. I don't know if it is because we always talk to her like she is an adult... and as I am home with her we talk to each other all day long. Or if she really is just the smartest kid ever. She has an alarming tendency of getting into the refrigerator when you open the door. This can be a bit of a pain as she is not so willing to move once she situates herself inside the door and starts pulling out that condiments. ( we currently are still looking for the cocktail sauce... it disappeared a couple of days ago) Apparently she has been ushered away from the refrigerator with "no no no" enough times that it has made a bit of an impression because the other day as I was drawing up my insulin she saw that I had left the door ajar and she toddled over saying " no no no" and closed the refrigerator door. All I could do was laugh. Now if we can just get the point across that SHE is the one that shouldn't be in the refrigerator. She also has decided that she likes to be chased. So she will take something that she knows that she shouldn't have and wait until I notice and then start running with a squeal. If I do not immediately start the chase she will stop and look at me for a moment and start off again. If she looses you from her line of sight she will come back until she sees you again and off she will go with a squeal. She is quite persistent and will continue until you do actually chase her. As I get bigger this seems like a less and less agreeable pass time for me... but it doesn't matter The Child Wants To Be Chased! and will stand for nothing less than a good chase. Luckily she is 1. easily tired out ( though not as easily as mom ) and 2. Easily distracted. As the weather has been so nice this week I have taken her outside to play several times. Which has made quite an impression because now every time that Dave goes out for a smoke she wants to go "side" with him. She does not take nicely to him turning her down! She has also spent the last few weeks perfecting the art of feeding herself. I don't know whose idea it was that a child younger than the age of six should feed themselves... but it is a bad idea. We are talking food in the hair and eyebrows floor to ceiling and everything in between. She has been intermittently feeding herself along the way, but it has only been the last few weeks that the idea of being fed by myself is truly offensive. The same is starting to happen with baby food. She sees what we are eating and wonders if we are crazy when we offer her the mush. So we offer it every now and then when the food we are eating is entirely inappropriate and the rest of the time she chows down on what we have. She LOVES asparagus, Brussels sprouts and cabbage. Yeah who would have thought? She also is a serious fan of salami and bologna. As a matter of fact bologna is one of her new words this week. She also has found that she can do two things that seriously alarm mommy. The first of which... she managed to stand up in her high chair despite the belt and the tray. We haven't been using the five point harness that ours comes equipt with... but it about time to start. Also her new way of telling us that she is hungry is to ummmm climb into the highchair and sit down she then looks at you and says "Eat" She has also climbed over the arm of the rocking chair into the rocking chair ( with out falling) and has taken to trying to climb up the book shelf from the couch. As this puts her significantly higher than any other climbing feat that she has attempted it takes my breath away. She is a climbing fool. When I pull her down Dave will say " you can't change the kid's nature just let her climb." I however don't want to visit the ER for a tumble so I am constantly chasing and saving the child from herself. Lord only knows what she will come up with next.
So we had another chance to see babe number two this week. Dave and the babe stayed home so it was just mommy. This was the heart study and there were also parts of the anatomy that couldn't be seen because of her positioning last time. Well we once again were in that room for an hour trying to get her to move... and once again we walked out with half of the pictures. I have to go back again in two weeks to see if we can get a better view. This kid is STUBBORN! She was obliging enough to show us again that she is indeed a girl. The ultrasound tech said that their group had not been wrong in the entire time that she had worked there... and that is a considerable amount of time... so I am betting that this is indeed a girl. She is still laying transverse on her left side. She is also a serious snuggler. She burrows into me when they try to look and everyone has remarked on what a cuddler this one is bound to be because of it. She is REALLY active right now. I guess it is the way that she is laying but I would swear that there are two in there. I have NEVER said that with any of my other children. I have gotten to the point of feeling the kicks and pushes with 4 of them and this one is BY FAR the most active. That scares me just a little. Because A was no where NEAR this active... and she is really hard to keep up with at the best of times. I guess we will just have to wait and see what this one will be like. That is not such an easy task. She is growing just the way that we want her too and over all the docs are extremely happy with how she is doing. I have developed an allergy to the Evil shot. It is very necessary so I am just taking Benedryl and we are watching it closely for right now. You may remember from the last pregnancy that it is a very viscous liquid and that it is put in over a long period of time. Now I end up with a huge itchy welt that lasts for about a week and a half. Doc has said that it would probably be best if this were my last. Dave and I had already decided to get my tubes tied... but as I am having problems with the shot this time... we don't want to push it.
Over all this has been an uneventful pregnancy. I have come to terms with the fact that I am not so very fond of pregnancy that it breaks my heart that this will be my last. As a matter of fact as I move through this pregnancy I am aware that I am ambivalent about the pregnancy. With A I was so excited about every little thing... even the discomforts. This time however I am not charmed by those discomforts. Instead I am put out by them and tired of them already. The other thing is that those discomforts seem to be showing up earlier in this pregnancy. My feet already swell to Grapefruit size. I didn't see that happen until 28 or 29 weeks with A. My back is constantly hurting and there is a nerve in my back that gets pinched constantly. And while I am not at that point where I just want it over yet I am certainly not singing through the pain like I was last time. But hey we have less time to go than we have already gone... so bring it on!!!