A Nap is a Nap... Right???

So for the third day in a row, someone crawled out of his bed immediately after being put down for naptime. But, he proceeded to play (mostly) quietly in his room, so I just let him be (and didn't quite have near as much Mom Guilt about it as I did yesterday). After about ninety minutes, though, I noticed that things had fallen suspiciously quiet... So I peaked in and found this:

Can't say that'd be my choice for the best place to nap, but at least he makes it look cute. Maybe he'll learn for next time... Or maybe we'll just progress to taking naps on the floor. Whatever works.

Mom Guilt

So for all intents and purposes, my son has been locked in his room for the past hour. He's supposed to be napping, but is clearly doing anything but. I know that I shouldn't necessarily feel bad about this, especially since I know there is nothing in his room that poses any sort of a threat, and I know that even if he doesn't take a nap he (and I!) need the quiet time, but still. Guilt city. Why? For one, he's probably in a poopy diaper. He almost always poops after his nap, and when he is trying to stall his nap, he'll poop sooner than later to try to get me in there to change it. So chances are, he pooped almost immediately after I put him down because he didn't want to nap, but I'm just not biting and going in there to change it like I have in the past. I also feel guilty because even if he does tire himself out and he decides he wants to nap he can't get back in his bed. He's been in a full-sized bed since sometime in December, and while he can climb out without much issue, it's a little too far off the ground for him to get back into. Which also means that if he left his puppy and blanket on his bed he wouldn't be able to get those even if he did want to lie down. And of course, I feel guilty every time he calls for me--which I can hear clear as day since we still have the monitor in his room. But I know he doesn't actually need anything, which makes it a little easier to ignore his demands. A little.

I'm just afraid that if I start going in there right away (like I did yesterday--three different times--when he was pulling the same stunt), that he'll learn that this is a "trick" he can employ to get out of his nap. And I am--under no circumstances--ready for my twenty-one month old to be nap-free. Especially with a baby on the way. So I guess that might mean he has to spend a little extra time in a poopy diaper (just praying he doesn't figure out how to get the poop OUT of his diaper!). And that might mean he takes an occasional nap on his bedroom floor. And it'll even mean I have to spend part of my afternoons feeling guilty. But I think I can live with that--at least for a little bit.

Love/Hate

I officially have a love/hate relationship with our healthcare system and my OB.

I love that we can now access our patient information via an online health portal. I can see the doctor's notes from recent visits, I can view my vital information that was collected, I can review upcoming appointments, and I can even send messages to my healthcare team (and get pretty prompt responses!). And I'm pretty sure I said this during my pregnancy with William, but I love that my OB is super laid back and doesn't get his (or my!) panties in a bunch over little things. For example, even though he did all the routine cervical checks during the end of my first pregnancy, he never made a point to tell me if (or how much) I was dilated, because he knows from his 30+ years of experience that very rarely is that information indicative on when or how soon labor will begin. My appointments are typically less than ten minutes--get in, get weighed, pee in a cup, check blood pressure, check baby's heart rate, measure the belly, get out. (And yes--I am fully aware that I've been lucky to have two pretty textbook pregnancies which have allowed for quick routine visits.)

However. I am learning that this combination of laid-back OB and online patient information creates a little problem that I hate. Because you see--all of the stuff that my doctor doesn't bring up in our appointments still gets recorded in my chart. So even though he may not tell me the unremarkable and/or unimportant information, he'll still record it, which means it will show up online for my viewing pleasure. Which is how I will discover that at my 33 week appointment baby was presenting in a breech position. Ummm.... What?!? That's a little too close to my due date for me to be comfortable with baby being in a breech position. As Darrell has assured me, though, if my OB were concerned about it and thought that it would present an issue for labor and delivery, he would have said something. Because he didn't, it means that he has confidence that the problem has plenty of time to work itself out and there is no reason to get worked up about it at this point. But still. Breech?!? Not a fan. Good thing I have my next appointment later this week. You'd better believe that if my doctor doesn't say anything about the baby's position during the appointment that I'm going to be (very) impatiently waiting for him to upload his record of my visit so I can see what he put in his notes--good bad or otherwise. You'd better also believe that if I start to freak out about this just a little bit more that Darrell will probably try to lock me out of my online patient portal for the remainder of this pregnancy. Because I'm sure the amount of speculation and concern will only increase as my doctor begins his cervical checks.


For the record, I have nothing but respect for my OB and I trust his judgment 100%. If he chooses not to tell me that my blood pressure is slightly low (which it has been throughout both pregnancies), that baby is presenting breech, that I'm already dilated, etc, I can (rationally) trust that they are not concerns at the given time. I also feel perfectly comfortable around my OB and would have no issue asking him for the information directly, even though I (rationally) know that if it were medically relevant he would tell me up front--and the fact that he isn't telling me means that it isn't an issue. However, I am pregnant, I am hormonal, and I am prone to bouts of irrationality. So I am going to be just a little bit freaked out that baby was breech ten days ago--and that if that trend continues it may mean that we'd be meeting baby a little sooner than we'd anticipated. Gulp.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from our family to yours!

1 Down, 11 to Go!!

While this post title could easily be referring to the number of posts that I need to catch up on (hello pregnancy that I haven't posted about in, oh, twelve weeks!), it's actually referring to the number of rooms in our house that are (finally!) completed. Not just functional, but actually organized, decorated, and something that I can be proud of!

And of course, what better room to start with than a bathroom? Small space, minimal effort, and the ability to reuse pretty much all décor items that we had in our previous house. Win win.

So, for fun, here's a picture of the bathroom when we moved in (or, more accurately, the picture from the real estate listing. Because let's be honest--no way did I remember to take "before" pictures of pretty much any of the rooms):

Super boring (pretty par for the course when we moved in. Everything was either super boring or super obnoxious. Have I shared any pictures of the neon pick and green room yet? No? Just you wait). And, if you look closely in the mirror, you can see that the tub had doors. No way was that happening in my house, especially since this bathroom is the one we primarily use to wash babies. While I'm sure William would have loved sliding the doors back and forth, I certainly appreciate all the space I have to wash a squirmy toddler with the shower curtain pushed all the way back.

So, to fix it up, we added a fresh (and colorful!) coat of paint, then decorated it with the same subtle beach theme we had in our previous house. And I totally talked Darrell into letting me get a (pretty large) quote for one of the walls--I pretty much love it.



Darrell has pretty well taken over bath time responsibilities with William because it's getting a little difficult for me to lean into the tub, but sometimes I still go hang out with them just because the room makes me happy. Which makes me super excited to get the rest of this house all fixed up--and believe it or not, we're actually making pretty good progress (we've only been living here for eight months, after all). Considering pretty much every room needed fresh paint (as I mentioned, the previous owners had really weird taste in colors, plus they did not care for the walls well, so there are all sorts of screw and nail holes that need major patching) and the fact that pretty much the entire basement had to be gutted five short weeks after we moved in thanks to a broken sump pump (but--Christmas miracle--our contractor was here last week getting started and he may actually be done with stuff by the new year!), I consider any progress to be good progress. And besides, we kind of have a deadline on getting the nursery done--baby could be here in just six short weeks!

Breaking Baby 2.0 News to Darrell

So this post is only, oh, four months overdue? Whoops. WEBS might as well get used to that--don't things for the second children frequently get overlooked? And as if this post hasn't been "overlooked" enough, WEBS is being subjected to another common "complaint" of second children: nothing they do receives the same type of fanfare as the oldest because it isn't "new". That was definitely the case for my baby reveal to Darrell this time around. If you remember back to when I told Darrell I was pregnant with William, I spent an entire day creating an elaborate scavenger hunt, complete with Suduku puzzles, an alpha-numeric key, and multiple gift cards. This time, I drove to one store (because obviously I had William with me and wasn't about to schlep him around town on multiple errands), found a card that pretty well got the point across (yay for getting the positive pregnancy test close to Father's Day!), and called it good.

I tried to get William to decorate the envelope, but he clearly knew that this was not news he was excited about because he lost interest in the coloring very quickly. Darrell didn't quite pick up on the "we" right away; he thought it was referring to me and William, not William and a second child. And even when he did make the connection, it was an anti-climatic celebration (in fact, "celebration" is quite a stretch. We hugged, we kissed, and that was about that. Although we did go out to Target later and bought WEBS a blanket, much like we did after we found out we were pregnant with William. So maybe that will be our "thing" for each new baby). Welcome to the family WEBS--we still love you plenty but just don't have the time or energy to get quite as excited about things with you as we did with William. It's the curse of the second child--and if we end up having another kid you'll really be cursing your luck then because you'll have all the plights of the middle child to deal with.

William: Eighteen Months!

Kind of hard to believe that next time I do one of these updates (at two years!) we'll have a second kid. Eek!

William has now decided that he absolutely does not like the doctor (or the hairdresser, for that matter). And that table that we're supposed to lay him on to get his height and weight? No way, not happening, no thank you. So to our best guess, William is now weighing in at 22 pounds, 12 ounces, and just over 31 inches. Definitely still a little peanut--although I seriously can't imagine his being any bigger because even now he is hard to carry at times. He's still wearing size four diapers, and pretty much exclusively in 18-month clothing, although I've found quite a few of his 24-month items that have either been shrunk or are just sized small because they fit him pretty perfectly right now (and in some cases, are actually a little too small. Which I find to be crazy). Two of his bottom molars have poked through, giving him a total of ten teeth, and it's been fun to watch him figure out how to eat with them--can't wait until the top ones come in (although hopefully they make much less of a dramatic entrance than the bottom ones; we spiked a 101* fever and picked up some bad sleeping habits before finally popping the molars through).

Speaking of sleep, things are still going really well in the department. We haven't officially begun transitioning him to his big-boy bed yet, but we have started getting ready by introducing a stuffed animal and blanket into his crib with him. And bless his heart, when we put him down for nap or bedtime, he lays right down and doesn't fuss or move around so when we put the blanket over him it actually stays. Definitely nice now that the temperatures have started dropping.

William continues to try to be as independent as he can be, and some of his boldness in maneuvering around things/climbing up and down things has definitely caught us off guard. Probably one of his favorite "accomplishments" is that he knows how to slide the kitchen chairs around the kitchen and climb up on to them to help Mom and Dad with whatever they are doing (his favorite things to "help" with are the dishes and cooking dinner--don't you dare try to do either without him!). He's also developed a love of puzzles, which this mama loves, and he surprised us both by mastering an alphabet puzzle in a matter of days (and he's now gotten to the point where he can recognize the letters by name because he's done it so many times. But don't ask him to mimic any of the alphabet sounds, though...)

Talking and words are still behind, but (thankfully!) our pediatrician agrees that it isn't really a concern because he still has strong non-verbal communication skills and clearly understands many commands (of course, whether or not he follows those commands depends on his mood at the time). He has finally added "Mama" to his vocabulary, though, which is super fun to hear (just not at 6:00 am....). Aside from "Mama" and "Dada", though, the only other "words" he really knows are animal sounds. But he uses the sound in place of the animal name when he's trying to tell us something (he'll go "woof woof" when he wants us to get him his stuffed puppy), so it's kind of like he uses the sound as a word. So it kind of counts. I'm not even sure anymore how many signs he knows; lately he's been creating signs of his own to communicate things to us (his favorite? Putting his hand to his ear whenever he wants a cell phone to play with. Thankfully he only uses this sign when a phone is actually in his line of sight, so for the most part we just keep our phones put away around him).  

These past few months have been So.Much.Fun, and sometimes Darrell and I think we're crazy for bringing another mini-human into this mix. But we also know William will be a great big brother (he's super sweet about giving baby--aka my belly--kisses and cuddles), so we're excited to see that role unfold (okay, let's be honest, we're mostly excited. We're also a little terrified about going back to some of the newborn stages. But it's a little late for us to change our minds!).

A few random shots from the past few months:

Excited to share the big news!

Playing in the dirt at Uncle Mike's baseball game

Ready for college football season! Go Gophers--and Georgia Tech! (just wait until you see his GT outfit; it's to die for)

 

Oh, you know, just playing in a back hoe. No big deal

Feverish little boy working on cutting his molars

Thankfully we haven't had too many of these bitterly cold days yet, but of course one of them was the day of Dad's last parade. And if he looks like he is sitting awkwardly it's because he can't put his arms all the way down on account of all the layers he has on

Cuddling with one of his puppies in the car