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

Friday Fun

 

Fingers crossed that this works; I've never tried uploading a video before! Hope this brings a few smiles for your Friday--and hope you are having as nice of a Friday as we are here--we're loving all this sun and temperatures in the seventies!

 

Mom Confession

Fact: My son is a better eater than I am. Probably because he doesn't quite have the element of choice that I do--he's pretty much limited to eating the food I put in front of him--but still. I intentionally make an effort to offer him healthy choices and a wide variety of fruits and veggies, but then don't really follow through myself (even though most of the time it would be super easy to). For example: Breakfast. I always have a bowl of cereal. Always. Even on days we have pancakes or something I usually end up sneaking a bowl sometime mid-morning. And while I'm not eating the super sugary stuff like Lucky Charms (although I totally would), it's still cereal. Pretty much just carbohydrates and milk. William, however, has a bowl of yogurt with fresh fruit, sometimes served with crushed cereal on top, sometimes served with an egg, sometimes served with a slice a bread. Just depends on what we have--and how hungry he is. And when he is inevitably hungry again by 9:30, I usually offer him more fresh fruit (and typically something different than what he had for breakfast) or string cheese or raisins and Cheerios if pickings are really slim. I, however, usually don't join him in that "healthy" snack, because I have typically spent most of the morning grazing on whatever goodies we have in the house--Oreos, gummy worms, goldfish crackers, even spoonfuls of Nutella straight out of the jar if I'm really desparate and we have no other snacks left in the house. I know that I'm growing another child and I know that I should probably better regulate what I'm feeding him/her, but at least I do a good job of offering William healthy options (at least most of the time). That counts for something, right?

For Comparison...

20 weeks with WEBS on the left, 20 weeks with BOB (William) on the right. Just a little bit of difference!

And I apologize for the ridiculously poor quality of the image, but if I were to wait for Darrell to do something fancy and stitch the images together all professional-like, it'd probably never get done. So take what you get--it's more than enough to see how much bigger I am this time around (and that's not even a recent picture; I was twenty weeks almost three weeks ago!).

It's a.... Baby!!

I'm sure you are all just dying to see pictures of me in all my pregnant glory, but if there's one thing I've learned with William it's that Baby is always more important than Mommy. And since I have pictures of WEBS (William Edsell's Baby Sibling), I figured I should share those first. But don't worry--eventually I'll get my pregnancy photos up--all ten+ weeks of them. Maybe I'll even pull out some from William's pregnancy to compare!

Kind of hard to tell, but that's both feet side by side. According to the ultrasound technician, though, baby didn't keep his/her feet together for very much of the ultrasound--whenever the technician was in the area (and Darrell and I had our eyes closed), baby had his/her legs spread open wide. Apparently finding out the sex would not have been a difficult task

"Hi Mom!"

Looking just like Big Brother William with a hand up by the face

Memories

I probably don't utilize this blog enough period, but I definitely don't use it enough to jot down and remember some of the cute/ridiculous things William does on a day to day basis. This is by no means a promise to change that behavior, because let's face it, I never have as many hours in the day as I would like, but I can't resist recording what William did last night because it was just too cute.

Just about every night last week Darrell went outside after dinner to do some yard work (before the inevitable first snow falls). Most nights William went out with him because A) William is not content to be in the house if someone is outside and B) I wasn't around because I had soccer so Darrell had no choice but to take William with him. Well, Saturday night Darrell and I were both home, and we were enjoying the opportunity to chat over dinner. William finished before us and was playing in the other room while we continued to chat, when all of the sudden William walks into the kitchen dragging Darrell's jacket. He carries it over to Darrell, puts it on his lap, and then walks to the back door and picks up Darrell's shoes. He then proceeds to bring those to Darrell as well, and even makes an effort to put them on, a la Cinderella-style. Apparently he had decided that we had been chatting long enough and that it was time for us to go outside and do more yard work--despite the fact that we hadn't exactly been planning on going outside because the weather wasn't kind of yucky and we didn't really have anything to get done. But after William was so cute about wanting to go out, we really couldn't tell him no. So outside we went. And what do you know--we enjoyed ourselves plenty despite the cooling temperatures and even found a few projects to work on. I guess William really does know best (just don't ever let him know that!).

Too Early....

Dear South Dakota:

I should not be able to see my breath when I am out for a morning walk on September 12th. It's too soon for that nonsense--I don't even have a winter coat for William yet! Please return to normal fall temperatures ASAP so we can do normal fall things like go to the apple orchard and have bonfires.

Love,
Jess, William, and Baby

PS Thank you for not dropping six plus inches of snow on us like you did cities in the western part of the state. I am most definitely not ready for that.

More Wedding (Photobooth) Photos

The two weddings over Labor Day Weekend had drastically different, but fairly standard, photobooth set ups. Backdrop, goofy hats, fun props, etc. And while the pictures are nothing remarkable, they are pretty much all we have to show (as of right now) from the weddings, so I'm going to share them anyway. Maybe once some of the professional photos come back I'll share some of those as well; I know the photographer from my brother's wedding got some pretty great shots of William!

We Survived

One weekend. Two weddings. 550+ miles apart.

We survived, we enjoyed it, but man did we need a few days to recover (and I definitely feel like I could use a few more!)

Saturday my brother got married (finally!!), so we started the festivities on Friday night and then were up and out the door by eight to start preparations for the big day. I was a bridesmaid, Darrell was a groomsman, and William was the ring bearer, so we all had responsibilities to tend to throughout the day (although pretty much all William had to do was look cute, and of course he nailed it). Even though it was pretty busy, it couldn't have been a more perfect day, and we are soooo glad that these two finally made it official!

Sunday we were up bright and early (to the tune of 3:15 am) to drive to Sioux City to catch our flight to Chicago for the wedding of one of my close high school girlfriends. And as if the whole situation wasn't crazy enough, I was also the Maid of Honor. Thankfully, we had no issues with flights or public transportation, and I made it to the hotel in plenty of time to partake in all the pre-wedding festivities (which included getting my makeup professionally done--a must after the early morning we had!). Even though we were exhausted, the dance at this wedding seriously rocked and we stayed out on the floor until midnight--and I daresay we would have stayed longer if the DJ hadn't had to shut things down. I wish these two fools didn't live in London, but we couldn't be happier for them!

I do have some photos of us from the weddings (although right now they are all photo-booth photos because you're kidding yourself if you think we actually remembered to take our own camera out and take photos), but I'll post those tomorrow or next week so I don't completely overload this post. And maybe at some point I'll update things with my pregnancy, considering I'm almost at the halfway point (which--by the way--how is that possible?!?!?). Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend!

The Craving Monster

(written July 9th)

It's officially happened. I've had a craving. A "I must eat those now or I will quite possibly be sick" craving. When I was pregnant with William I never really had any major cravings. I had foods that sounded good (and definitely foods that sounded bad), but nothing insatiable. The closest I think I ever came was wanting a Butterfinger one time--but that was mostly because I saw one, realized I hadn't had one in forever, and decided it sounded good (and when I mentioned that in an email to Darrell, he picked on up for me on his way home). But tonight? Tonight was different. It started the same as the Butterfinger story--I was reading an online article that casually mentioned a particular food item (that I probably haven't eaten for close to ten years), and I thought to myself "That sounds delicious". Then, when I read the article a second time (it was pretty funny so I read it out loud to Darrell), I got to the same reference and immediately had the food item ingrained in my brain. Ingrained in a "I may not be able to go to sleep tonight until I get that food in my belly" kind of way. So, at 9:00 at night, what did Darrell do? Head to the nearest DQ to fulfill my craving. Which--for the record--wasn't for ice cream (although the article DID mention ice cream). No, I sent my husband to Dairy Queen--less than an hour before bedtime--for a chili cheese dog. Yes. A totally unhealthy, probably super terrible for you chili cheese dog. And I can barely wait for him to get home. I may or may not have pulled up a picture from Dairy Queen's website to temporarily stave the monster off.

Update: Chili cheese dog has been consumed. And it was FANTASTIC. I probably could have eaten four more.

Update 2.0: So I've constantly been playing the comparison game between this pregnancy and my pregnancy with William, thinking that somehow I will be able to rationally deduce the sex based on the similarities and/or differences between the pregnancies. I was all set to chalk this craving up to a "difference" (and ergo a tally in the WEBS is a girl column), but then I remembered something. My grandpa died when I was about four months pregnant with William, and after the visitation a lot of the family went to the local bar to get some food and drinks. Since it was fairly late, most everyone just ordered an appetizer or two to share. Me? I ordered myself a Chili Cheese Burger (exactly what it sounds like--a cheese burger topped with chili) and polished the whole thing off. And it was delicious. Which I guess means that this craving is probably more of a similarity than a difference.... Chalk one up for WEBS being a boy. (Oh, by the way: WEBS=William Edsell's Baby Sibling).

Update 3.0: I've officially had more chili cheese dogs in this pregnancy than I've had in the last fifteen years combined. We're only talking like four or five, but considering I never used to eat them it's definitely a change. And I could definitely go for one again. Mmmm......

One More...

I did find one more photo from the beach that I just had to share... It's too important not to :-)

Coming in February!!

A (Fairly Sizeable) Boo-Boo

I headed down to Omaha this past weekend for a bachelorette party for my soon-to-be sister-in-law (woo-hoo!), and left William home with Darrell. It seemed like a pretty safe and reasonable choice... Until I got this picture Saturday night:

Too be fair, it wasn't exactly Darrell's fault. And it probably would have happened even if I had been around. Someone got a little fussy and over-tired at the zoo, and protested Darrell putting him back in the stroller to get ready to leave. In the midst of his tantrum, William threw himself out of the stroller and face planted into the ground. And if you're thinking "He really doesn't look all that upset about the road rash", you're pretty much right. Apparently he cried for all of a minute, and then took the stroller and started pushing it around (which was what he was trying to do before Darrell put him in the stroller and started the tantrum in the first place).

It has started to look a little worse in recent days as it's starting to heal, but it hasn't seemed to bother him in the least, which is good. I'm sure this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to injuries we're going to have to deal with.

Two days post-face plant

Beach Week 2014

I'm sure we have other pictures laying around on our phones, other camera, etc, but if I wait to do this post until I have all my ducks in a row.... Well, then this post would never happen. Besides, some is better than none, right?

And there isn't really much to say to preface these pictures with--it's a week at the beach with Darrell's family, which means no itinerary except sun, sand, and waves. And William was not afraid of any of it in the least.

Enjoying his own seat on the flight from Chicago to Charlotte

Beach baby!

King of the Beach

Splashing in the waves with Daddy

 

Happy Boy!

Loving the waves!

Struttin' his stuff

Playing with cousin John (these two were soooo cute together!)

Big wave!

Priceless

Double rainbow

 

 

William: Fifteen Months!

While it's too much work to try to keep up with monthly updates (considering I'm still running over two weeks late on this one), I figure I can still post updates whenever we have a well-visit at the doctor's office (since that's the only way I know William's height and weight anyway).

William weighed in two ounces shy of 22 lbs at fifteen months and measured 30 inches, although there is probably a little leeway in those measurements because someone was not feeling very cooperative at the doctor's office (I'm pretty sure he remembered getting his twelve-month shots because he started screaming as soon as we got back to the exam room). He's wearing size four diapers and primarily twelve-month clothing, although there's always some discrepancy among the varied brands. He's also (finally!) up to eight teeth; after cutting all four top ones a month or so before his first birthday, he went on a three-month hiatus and didn't start cutting numbers seven and eight (both on the bottom, opposite sides of his middle two) until just after fifteen months. We're pretty sure he's working on some molars right now, but nothing has broken through yet. Sleep has also been pretty fantastic lately. He sleeps from 8:00 pm to 7:00 am and goes down for his nap at 12:30 pm for anywhere from two to three hours. He still fusses a little when we first put him down, but usually only long enough for us to leave the room and close the door. It took some battles to get where we are now, but I'm definitely loving this sleeping stage.

While we might have expected William to put on more weight between his twelve and fifteen month visits because he eats All.The.Time, he is also ALWAYS on the move. He pretty much wore through his first pair of shoes in a matter of three months, partially because he always wants to go outside and knows no limits once he is there (rocks, mud, puddles--everything is fair game for this kid). He even started climbing the ladder up to the slide on our play set, which caught both Darrell and I by surprise. Stairs are also no problem for our little guy; I think we used the baby gate at our new house for two weeks before realizing was futile. William learned pretty quickly how to crawl down the stairs, although he is now trying to master walking down them (which makes Mom and Dad a little bit more nervous--but he's always really good about holding on to the railing and going slowly, so we let him do it).

Talking is still, well, a little behind. He does a fantastic job of communicating, but only through sign language, pointing, and grunting. We've more-or-less agreed that William's first word was "dada", pretty much because that's the only word that he'll (occasionally) repeat on command. And he definitely seems to understand who it refers to. I'd pretend to be jealous, but he's such a daddy's boy that it doesn't surprise me in the least.

A few favorites worth noting: He LOVES his bat and ball. Or really, balls and anything that resembles a bat. He will spend at least ten minutes a day hitting/pushing his balls around the house using everything from a Swiffer dust wand to a wooden spoon. Another favorite "game" is pouring stuff into and out of bowls, cups, buckets, etc. He will spend pretty much an entire bath pouring water back and forth between cups. He also really enjoys books and a lot of times will just pull them off the shelf and page through them on his own. And once he finds a favorite book, he typically insists on having that one read before naps and bedtimes for multiple days in a row (we actually went out and bought a book because he fell so in love with a library book that he refused to fold his hands for bedtime prayers until we had read that book). While he will pretty much eat anything we put in front of him, blueberries are easily his favorite food (there may or may not have been an incident on the 4th of July where he ate an entire pint before 9:00 am. I swear we tried cutting him off multiple times, but he wasn't having it).

I don't have any "staged" photos of him at fifteen months, but I did find plenty of random pictures from the past few months that haven't made it on the blog.... Enjoy!

Go Twins!

The aftermath of a (rare) picky meal where all he wanted do was spit the food out of his mouth

Playing before bedtime!

Isn't that shirt awesome? Mini-nerd alert :-)

Mom wouldn't let him eat any of the candy at the parade, so he decided that he would load up on stickers instead

A rare morning nap in the stroller--he's so innocent looking!