Christmas Fun

Christmas seems to get more fun each year. Penny seems to have gleaned quite a bit about Santa from somewhere. Knew he was supposed to come, he had a sleigh pulled by reindeer, Christmas was his big day. Not really sure whether she knew he's supposed to bring presents, though. Santa made a guest appearance at her daycare on Wednesday and she says that it's her teachers that gave out presents. So she was worried that Christmas as a whole is brought by Santa, not just presents, apparently. 

Christmas came and was plenty of fun. Penny helped Daddy sort the presents. As you can see, there was a bit of confusion about whose gifts were whose. "P" is Penny's personal letter, not to be shared by anyone, so it took a while to convince her that some of the gifts were designated for Paul. Though she seems to recognize all the letters and their respective sounds, she doesn't seem to get that you can sound out a word by putting the sounds of individual letters together. Ultimately, she had to help Paul open his gifts anyway, but it seemed important that she realize some of the gifts are intended for Paul to play with. I was surprised to find that she knows my name - look at that, I have an identity in addition to being "Mommy!" 

Dan got some of the items he wanted as well. He's pretty tough to buy for - always on top of procuring the items on his own wish list. However, he Santa did manage to get there first on a couple of items - a very fun card game we were introduced to by our friends Brent & Celeste, as well Zelda. I'm wondering when he plans to play either, but whenever we get time, we are totally set!

Paul spent much of Christmas day sleeping. Fairly typical for someone his age, I suppose. He did manage to wake up long enough to venture over to Great-Uncle's house for Christmas dinner. He's also fighting his cold pretty well. He's still pretty stuffy, but the raspy breathing has lessened a bit. I've been annoying him periodically by introducing tummy time. On the plus side, it inspired his first successful roll onto his back today. He's also really good at holding up his head and looking around to explore the world. He seems most fascinated by ceiling fixtures. He also likes looking out the windows quite a bit. Perhaps with just a little more recovery time we'll start venturing out a bit more.

One Month

Where did the last month go? I'm afraid I have fallen into the trap of the middle kid having no pictures. So sad. But really, when am I supposed to have a hand free for a camera? When I'm not cuddling or feeding him, I'm doing my best to give Penny some fun time as well. In all fairness, there aren't any new pictures of Penny either. We did get a chance to do a family portrait session, thankfully, so I did enjoy that. Here's some nice shots of the two of them together.

After the photo session, Penny enjoyed a ride around the mall in the train with Daddy. It's amazing how long the session took, how shy she was, but how she really remained pretty good as we put together our picture order. Family portraits are expensive! Maybe we'll hold off for a while.

In the first couple of weeks of having little Paul home, we ventured out to the mall or shopping a few times. It's a good time to do so...he's still pretty portable, sleeps most of the time, etc. We even did a few trips with big sister Penny as well. Slow trips, but we got a few good things done. I'm glad we got them in when we did because we're definitely homebound now. We've all got some horrible germ that's got us coughing up a storm, even little Paul. The coughs aren't frequent, but pretty nasty chest-coughs. It's hard to watch the little guy because he has no way to really clear all the mucous. We're going to the doctor again tomorrow just to check that we're doing everything we should for him. Penny will be excited...she has enjoyed every one of Paul's visits, picking up his sucker and stickers for him (and maybe consuming them herself). I'm kinda bummed because I didn't really finish my Christmas shopping and can't really make it up at this point. Alas, maybe next year will go smoother.

Penny has finally made a real breakthrough in the potty training department. She has been able to detect for some time that she has to go, but never really had the motivation to go to the potty instead of her diaper. For some reason in the past few days, though, the stickers and possibility of wearing pink (training) diapers has gotten very motivational. She's going multiple times a day, asking to go, getting really excited, etc. It's awesome stuff. I like being able to praise her about something as well. I feel like I'm always telling her "no" recently, so this is a welcome opportunity to give some positive feedback to her.

Christmas is just a few short days away and Penny's WAY excited. She seems convinced that my yelling at her will keep Santa from coming. It's hard to punish her for doing something wrong, while convincing her that it isn't serious enough to merit the naughty list. What a strange balance to have to strike! An adventure every day, it seems!

Paul Has Arrived

So I'm a little slow in posting, but it's rough with a new person on the team and a big holiday where everyone is home! Unfortunately, we're already falling into the trap of the second child - not quite so many pictures as we had of Penny by this age. But here's a little to whet your appetite and a link over on the right to the pictures they took at the hospital.

I had had my hopes up early with some reasonably strong Braxton-Hicks contractions a few weeks prior to Paul's due date. While I didn't want to head to the hospital on a false alarm, I had some promise of a quick labor, so didn't want to chance being stuck on the wrong side of the Verrazano Bridge at rush hour. On Thursday morning (-2 days from due date), I had a nice round of strong contractions 4 minutes apart and 30 seconds long, so that seemed like a good time to head to the hospital. Now, I had mentioned this to Dan, but he was getting ready to head to work and figured it would take me a while for my contractions to get to the 2 minutes apart 1 minute long phase. Again, big nasty bridge and morning rush hour, so I insisted on going to the hospital with him right then. He helped me put on my TENS machine (fun little electro-stimulator thing that desensitizes me to the contractions) and we hopped in the car. Wouldn't you know, as soon as we crossed the bridge, the contractions stopped cold.

After a lovely breakfast at the hospital cafeteria, we decided we'd do like we did with Penny and walk around the mall for a bit. I had kinda already done in his work day by making him miss morning rounds at his hospital. Not being totally familiar with Brooklyn, we hopped on the mall we knew was subway accessible - Atlantic Terminal. I was still having contractions and was generally uncomfy and tired, but there seemed to be some signs of progress. While he explored Best Buy, though, I took a bit of a nap break on a bench. We still had a few hours to blow before my regularly scheduled Thursday non-stress test and midwife appointment and I wasn't quite sure I could make it there without a nap.

As we contemplated where to nap in Brooklyn, we thought of our good friends, Brent and Celeste, who had just moved to the area the prior week (in time to make it to Penny's birthday party). Penny didn't seem to recall that she always cried in Brent's presence for some reason when we were down in Grenada, because they hit it off quite nicely at the party. In any case, Brent very graciously allowed us to interrupt his work and hang out for a bit. He fed us some lovely lunch, introduced us to their vivacious kitten and allowed me to borrow the bed briefly as I recovered some strength in the afternoon. Then he even drove us back to the hospital for my non-stress test.

The non-stress test was extra revealing. Apparently, I was having twice as many contractions as I thought. There were little ones in between each one I felt, so I was perhaps a bit further along than I believed. They asked whether I wanted to check into the labor and delivery ward right then and there. It still seemed a little early to me, so we decided to just walk down the street to the midwife with the results to see what she thought about timeline. It was about 4pm and I was starting to require more breaks when walking from place to place. The midwife seemed to wonder why I hadn't already checked in 4cm dilated and plenty of contractions, but was willing to let me walk around the neighborhood a little more if I wanted to. I told her I needed to at least stop and have some dinner because I was starving. She reminded me to not wait too long - no more than a couple of hours at the most - before I checked into L&D. Dan and I walked one block to the pizza place, which was the equivalent of three different contractions. Hmmm...we grabbed a couple of slices of pizza and a nice loaf of bread to go, then headed over to L&D.

Though supposedly there were no rooms available when we arrived, once the midwife showed up at the hospital, I got a room right away. It's such a nice big room at NY Methodist! We settled in and debated when the best time to grab my delivery room bag from the car would be. Kind of a moot point when you're already in the delivery room. My TENS was still serving me well and apparently was the first most of the staff had ever seen in action. Got my antibiotic IV going, but once that was all done, I got off the IV. I was pretty much untethered except for occasional monitoring. I loved being able to be untied!

My midwife was awesome. She gave me this great back massage that helped increase pressure on the cervix at the same time. The only problem was that it was the awesomest back massage I've ever had in life. She told me to just let her know when I felt like pushing and we'd take a break and do some pushing. Why would I ask her to stop such an amazing massage? My back has been killing me for months now! Eventually, I figured I had to let the massage go and get on with the birthing action. She asked Dan if he'd like to deliver the baby himself. Dan very politely asked me whether I wanted him on my end for moral support or the baby's side of things to deliver. I told him I'd be ok, so he could deliver the baby if he'd like. Apparently, he'd never actually gotten to deliver a baby when he did his ob/gyn rotation. So the midwife took charge of positioning me and ensuring I didn't tear anything (as I had with Penny), while Dan took charge of catching the baby. He may have dropped the slippery little squirt as he emerged, but it was a short distance to the bed, so Paul was ok. It was 8:43pm and our little Paul had finally arrived.

Penny's Birthday Party

As you can see, I'm a little behind on my posts. It has been a whirlwind of a month so far. We began the celebration of Penny's birthday just a little after Halloween. It has had almost a year-long build-up, so hardly shocking that we had to spread the celebrating over a few days. As soon as she started getting cards in the mail, it was all birthday all the time. Do you remember when birthdays were this exciting? Every card was a fresh reminder of the impending party and visit with friends. Each gift, no matter how small in size, was immensely significant because it was just for her, to celebrate her being one (I'm guessing #1, because I think she knows that she turned three. She's #1, I'm 2 and Daddy is #3 for anyone who wants to know the official tally). 

The party itself was held on Saturday. I had to change the date and get the day off at the last minute because some goofy person scheduled a marathon on Sunday (my usual day off). The marathon totally closes off access to the island from Brooklyn, which would have prevented some of our guests from coming - not right at all! When we moved to Saturday, it seemed that pretty much everyone was able to adjust to the new date and actually get here with relative ease.

It wasn't a fancy party, but apparently had all the right elements - a rainbow speckled cake with pink icing and butterflies, plenty of stickers for everyone to share, friends to play with and novel toys everywhere. Plus there was lots of space in the house for our little guests to explore. The freely-flowing pretzels were a big hit with the birthday girl as well. All our Grenada friends who live in the area made an effort to come, so it was awesome getting a chance to catch up with the grownups a bit as well. I think Penny had really hoped everyone would spend the night, she was having so much fun! Daddy helped the party along with a little invitation to Goodfella's Pizza for everyone. If you're going to come all the way to Staten Island, you should at least get to eat food that has won international recognition, right?!

Apple Picking

Last weekend we joined some of our Grenada friends for apple picking up in Westchester County. Julie and Liam hosted a delicious breakfast at their new house over in NJ so we were appropriately fueled up and ready for the day. Penny had a great time catching up with her friends, checking out their toys and getting psyched about the day.

We followed our reliable little GPS into the lovely forested hills just North and West of NYC. The trees were just starting to turn- so there were the lovely reds and oranges of the poison ivy draped over the lingering greens of the trees. As we cruised through quaint little towns and fields, I was briefly reminded of fall at home or in Ithaca. Then we got within a mile of the orchard and we found ourselves rudely returned to the reality of being so close to NYC - we were stuck in a traffic jam. Every five minutes or so, we'd inch up one car length. As we finally turned into the orchard driveway, a staff member came out and began announcing to the idling hoards that the parking lot was full and folks should return in an hour when some folks had left. I called our caravan and was pleased to discover we were only a few car lengths apart and we'd all made it in. After a brief line for the bathroom and another to get our apple bags, we got to embark on our apple extravaganza.

Penny had an excellent time picking most of the apples herself. The trees were conveniently short and so heavy-laden as to touch the ground in some places. Though some were firmly attached, Penny still wrenched them free and quickly gathered a couple of pecks of apples. Our little friends were kind enough to sample throughout the orchard and let us know which apples were the yummiest. Overall, a really great time.

When we were truly weighted down with apples ourselves, we headed back to the barn/food area for some apple donuts. They were quite tasty. Plus, there was a fascinating marionette show for the kids. It was Penny's first exposure to stringed puppets, so she spent quite a while right up against the stage and also exploring backstage to see how everything worked.




As the sun began to set and some ominous clouds lurked on the horizon, we bid our friends farewell. I plugged in "home" to our trusty GPS and rolled out of the parking lot. We made it to the main road, then the batteries died. Dan had handed me the phone charger instead of the GPS charger, so now it was me and my phone navigating home. I had my phone set so it wasn't giving very accurate readings of my location, so I used landmarks I recognized to get us back through the countryside to the interstate. Once there, things were a little more straightforward. Of course, a trip to the countryside was what every New Yorker with a car did on such a lovely day, so we soon found ourselves thoroughly snared in nasty traffic. As I nervously eyed my gas gauge, Penny dozed in the back. Gas prices are a good $0.50 cheaper in New Jersey compared with NY state. If I could just get those two little hash marks to last through Westchester County, there should be a rest area pretty quick in New Jersey...my Gas Buddy App promised. I sure am glad there's a little gas left in the tank when those hash marks disappear, that's all I have to say.

We stopped for gas and a bite to eat at Burger King. Penny had her usual - chickens, french fries, chocate milk and soda. She never eats the nuggets at the meal, just fries, but I have to order the chicken anyway. The stop also allowed me time to plot the rest of the way home. My phone doesn't read aloud to me, so I tried to study a few steps ahead so I didn't have to keep checking it (muy peligroso!). The phone suggested an unusual route, but I figured it must know something I didn't about traffic. It had already been two hours, so avoiding further traffic was an attractive option.

We sallied forth once more. Taking a lovely little highway through scenic Newark, NJ. We cruised along nicely until the sign that the left two lanes were closing. Then the sign saying all lanes closed at exit 4. And so we found ourselves cruising quite unexpectedly through downtown Newark, with lights at every block and no real good place to pause and recalculate our route. We managed to make our way back to the highway we had exited and enjoyed smooth sailing from there. A mere four hours from the orchard and we were relaxing at home once more.

posted from Bloggeroid

Columbus Day Close to Home

 We decided to live it up with a little fun close to home for Flat Stanley's last week here. First, he sneaked into Penny's backpack for a chance to head back to pre-school. Parents aren't allowed into the classrooms, so I'm not exactly sure what they did there and I didn't give Penny the camera to document the visit. It must have been pretty fun, though, because he came back even more adventurous than before. 

Sometimes when people feel extra adventurous, they try something they never did before - eat octopus, climb a really big mountain, go skydiving. With a little encouragement from Penny, Stanley's sense of adventure led him to explore the world of body art. Being flat, tattoos made a little less sense than some simple finger paint. In no time at all, Stanley was feeling really stylish, ready to head out and tackle anything. 

Our first task was to take some of our pumpkins from last week and make them into some tasty treats. Stanley helped scoop out the seeds and roll them in butter, cinnamon and sugar so we could bake and eat them. We also baked the pumpkin itself to make some lovely cookies.

We took some of our yummy treats on the road with us to the Staten Island Children's Museum. It's not the world's biggest museum, but it has tons of fun stuff to do and there were a whole lot of kids there for Columbus Day weekend. Stanley started off slow with a little giant board game fun. He was doing pretty well at Connect Four. It was tough getting the pieces in because the holes were so high, but Penny helped.

Stanley actually got to try his hand at camouflage in the insect wing of the museum. Here he is helping Penny arrange colorful little plastic pieces to decorate the wings of the butterfly. I'll bet you can barely see him!

At last it was time to go home, not just from the museum, but also for Stanley to return to Georgia. Penny, now nearing the completion of her third year as an islander, felt a little pirate-y about the sendoff. She tied Stanley to the mast of a nearby sloop and sent him southward with a fond, "Fare thee well, Matey!"

Queens County Farm Museum

When most people think of New York City, they think of the skyscrapers, subways and busy streets of Manhattan. But there's actually five boroughs in NYC - Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Having explored the Brooklyn Children's Museum, taken the subway through Manhattan and enjoyed the Staten Island Ferry, we decided it was time to take Flat Stanley to a different borough. It seemed like a great weekend to visit to the Queens County Farm.

Queens County Farm is a long drive from where we live, but we picked up our friend Paul. Paul's daddy is also in medical school like Penny's daddy. Paul had one request when visiting the farm - he wanted to see some animals. We were in luck! There were lots of fun animals at the farm. We started by visiting some friendly chickens.

We just missed getting to watch the sheep shearing contest. The sheep looked a little cold there in little more than their skins. Here Stanley is trying to tell the sheep about the great sweater vendor just a few feet away. I don't know if he realized where her supplies had come from.

Not too far away, we found a great spot where they let us feed the animals. They had all kind of different things - from pigs and chickens to lizards, turtles and llamas. Penny had a great time finding which animals really wanted lettuce and carrots. It seemed that most of the rabbits and guinea pigs had already had their fill of carrots. But the pigs seemed pretty hungry (almost lost a finger or two!) and the llama was more than happy to eat several of our lettuce leaves. Penny was excited to see that she and the animals liked so many of the same vegetables.We were really looking forward to picking our own pumpkins, but managed to miss the open hours with all the excitement at the petting portion of the farm.

At the end of the day, we started the long journey home. We dropped off Paul at his house in Queens, then drove all the way through Brooklyn to get home to Staten Island. We had a nice dinner of chicken, carrots and celery (hmmm...I think we saw all those things on the farm). Penny started to type up our adventures on the computer with Stanley. But then it got pretty late, so we headed to bed.

Visit from Flat Stanley

For the past week or so, we've had a very special guest visiting us from Atlanta! Our niece Catie mailed her friend Stanley for a visit. Normally, I like letting our young guests in to visit the Brooklyn Children's Museum for free, but we were closed for most of his time here. So, he didn't get to play with all our cool exhibits. Instead, he got to help us with our annual deep clean and renovations. Here you can see Stanley visiting with Fantasia, our 20-foot-long Burmese Python. She was glad to have a bit of company since it has been so quiet for the past couple of weeks. She even popped her head up from her nap to say, "Ssssalutationsss!"

 

Another big project Stanley helped with was building a new enclosure for our iguanas, Iggy and Elizabeth. Here he is testing the safety net to ensure that Elizabeth won't fall into the pool below. There are just a few more finishing details before the new living quarters are ready for our scaly friends to move in.

You can't make a visit to New York without spending a little time seeing the sights. A lot of times, the easiest way to get around New York City is by taking the subway. Here, Stanley is enjoying a quick bite to eat while on his way to the next exciting destination. He got lucky and had his own seat...often there are so many people on the subway that there's barely even room to stand.

The most exciting site that Stanley got to see was the Statue of Liberty. This year is going to be her 125th birthday. It's hard to believe that the people of France gave her to us more than a century ago! To celebrate, the mayor of New York met with the president of France today at the Statue and wished her a happy birthday. Hopefully, she'll be watching over New York Harbor for many more years to come. Stanley was impressed that he could get such a nice view from the free ferry over to Staten Island. Plus he was happy to head home after such a busy day.

Garage Sales!

So something I discovered when I moved to Staten Island is that they're not really into garage sales here. The selection is paltry, they're often only on Saturdays, and the sales themselves are terribly puny. Back home, you just pick a random weekend and cruise around the right neighborhoods and you can't help hitting half a dozen decent sales. Here, I discovered I had to do my homework, research before I hit the road. Unfortunately, because I work Saturdays, my options have been extremely limited. Since the museum is closed this week, I've been able to switch to a regular person schedule, allowing me a window of two weekends in which to hit all the sales necessary to compose Penny's wardrobe for the next year or two and fill the gaps in my collection for the Passenger. 

I take my garage sale hopping seriously, so I spent the past week

Egret consuming fish it captured

1. inventorying the baby wardrobe to know exactly what I need and what I don't
2. going through the Craigslist listings for the weekend to filter which sales mentioned baby furniture and clothes significantly enough to be worth visiting
3. mapping where each sale was to choose the routes that would likely give the highest payoff with the most stops in a small area
4. pestering my organization to get the petty cash they owe me so I had some shopping money
   

With my map, sale descriptions and Penny in tow, I headed off bright and early Saturday morning. By lunch, we had hit about 5 sales, procuring the better part of her 3T and 4T wardrobe, a toy at each sale (she's too cute for my wallet's good), and a baby picnic table. We enjoyed a leisurely lunch for an hour before heading out again. The last three sales were ok, but not as good as the morning's haul. I had a lot to do Sunday, so figured we'd miss the few Sunday sales I had moved down on the priority list. As Penny and I headed to church on Sunday, though, the mother-lode! There is this lady on that route who has the most amazing yard sales - tables and tables of baby clothes. She must actually go out and round up clothes to sell, unless she has an obscene number of children or a hoarding disorder. In any case, I did some speed shopping - hadn't found any PJs in any other sale, so ransacked her two loaded tables of boys and girls PJs in about 10 minutes before heading over to church. After church, we managed to head back and fill in a couple more holes in the wardrobe with her awesome selection of slightly used or even tags-on deeply discounted clothes. It was great!

After a full weekend of non-stop shopping, though, I figured I owed Penny a bit of actual Mommy and Penny fun. I asked what she wanted to do - she wanted to go on a slide by a lake. Conveniently enough, we were close to Willowbrook Park, complete with duck-filled lake and a nice playset. We stopped to feed some goldfish to the bluegill in the lake, but the ducks were a bit faster than the fish. It seemed the egret was a bit faster than the fish, too, because we saw him successfully stab and eat a fish. After some quality time on the slide, it was getting close to dinner time so we headed back to the car. On the way, we just couldn't resist the carousel. Penny selected "the beautiful horse" and eagerly boarded. It was a bit tough to record her excitement while I held her on and secured our bags, but she was having too good a time to miss the photo opp. She's so much fun to play with. Everything is so exciting, whenever you ask how she's doing, she responds, "Great!" Though she's not an angel by any means, she has a generally good spirit about excitement about exploring the world that's infectious. So we had an awesome weekend, I'm feeling good about how much we accomplished in just a couple of days. Looking forward to maybe spending this Saturday actually relaxing or spending time doing fun things. I do have a Flat Stanley visiting, so I have to find something exciting for him to do.

Brooklyn Bridge Park

 This weekend we met up with our Flats Friends at Brooklyn Bridge Park. If anyone is in the area, this has got to be one of the greatest public parks ever. It has "neighborhoods" of themed play structures. Most of these pics are from the vast Sahara of the sand pit, but there is also a Slide Mountain, Swing Valley, little sprinkler park set up like a stream. Recently, they installed bathrooms (thank goodness!) and a couple of food stands with picnic tables. It's also got a fab view of Manhattan since it's situated under Brooklyn Bridge. In any case, it's sort of midway for all our friends to get together and it's a great area for folks Penny's age. The hardest part is getting there since it's only sort of subway accessible and parking can be a hassle. We headed out early in case traffic was bad and managed to get there a full 30 minutes before we schedule to meet anyone. For someone as serious as Penny is about playing in the sand, this job gets pretty hot and sweaty, even on a cool day like Labor Day was. So we had already moved on to water play by the time our friends joined us.

 A quick wardrobe change and she was ready to roll in the water play area. It is such an awesome setup. The upstairs has a bunch of cool toys for moving the water - Archimedes screw, water wheels, sprayers, etc. - then the water trickles down a fake rocky stream (great for splashing) into this ankle deep pool. They had just enough of the jets turned off so that I could make a semi-dry crossing to the island between the levels for dry (and seated) supervision. Most other adults were soaked or standing at the fences around the area. Penny was having a great time running around - perhaps a little too great, because she had quite a few full body head-on collisions with other kids, all of whom seemed more massive than her. She usually just shrugged it off. But after the second run-in with friend Paul, she decided to sit out for a while. She sat on me, so I spent the rest of our visit trying to dry off.

We had a great time catching up with our friends Paul, Kylan and baby Kaleb (and their mommies and daddies). It seems we're all applying to what seems like a few billion schools all over the country in hopes of getting into at least one good residency program. Seems a bit like a scam when you think about how much they charge you just to apply, but that's the way the system is set up. We'll see how this all goes in the next few months as Dan gets some interviews (hopefully).

If you've wondered why on earth my posting has been so curtailed, it's because I've got one dangerously cute little girl on my hands and some serious mommy fatigue. I mean, look at her, can you really tell her no ALL the time? For example, she is currently going through a Minnie Mouse thing. She just HAS to have Minnie on all her diapers. Darn those diaper folks, they have four different patterns on the diapers in the same box and only two of them have Minnie. So I've had to resort to drawing Minnie onto the remaining half of the diapers. I usually do a day's worth in a sitting. What would I do if Mom hadn't shown me some simple character drawing skills back in the day?! Some of those little hints can be really darned useful when you get down to it. It's nice to know that she can help me be a mom even when she's not here to actively consult every time we hit a challenge.

I apparently haven't been posting quite enough about our new little one recently because I've gotten quite a few inquiries about the little guy (it's a boy month). He's doing quite well. It looks like we'll be getting new pics about monthly for the home stretch here as they're going to be watching us pretty carefully. He's not much of a kicker, but LOVES stretching. I'm constantly having to remind him to stop trying to poke out like the namesake for the movie Alien. Penny likes to have me ask the baby if he can hear her yelling, cleaning, jumping, etc. She'll then shout into my tummy to that effect. He sometimes kicks her in response. Penny's still climbing on me, despite repeated warnings not to hurt the baby. It does seem to be a little less frequent, though. Who knows, maybe she'll come out of this less violent than she had been getting! I obviously enjoy rough-housing a bit too much. Just a little while until Nov. 19. Have to get quite a bit in order still. I have inventoried the wardrobe, so know exactly where the holes are for the next one and have been trying to fill those on and off through garage sales. However, our busy schedule and the dearth of quality garage sales in this area have left some serious gaps still. We'll get there eventually. I've got some hope that folks will be hanging at home this weekend and looking to distract themselves with some garage sale action. We'll see.

Hurricane Irene

It's nice to experience two decent-sized natural disasters in a row and not have much to say about them. The museum decided on Friday afternoon to close for both Saturday and Sunday. That left me plenty of time to prep for the hurricane all day Saturday. We brought in the potted plants, put away everything in the yard, then tied up the trash cans. That didn't last much past noon, so allowed for a nice recovery nap for four hours or so. Penny even joined me briefly, taking the first nap she actually slept for in the previous couple of weeks. Sunday dawned plenty rainy, but without the expected 70-100mph winds I had prepped for. By afternoon, the rain had disappeared, but there were those winds. That meant we stayed indoors pretty much the whole day. Even though we weren't doing much of anything, it was a very tiring day. I tried the same nap move that had worked on Saturday, but apparently Penny just wanted to keep me from napping, not join me.

We seriously lucked out overall. No major wind damage. No basement flooding. We live right across the street from the evacuation center, so we weren't affected by street flooding either. It was perhaps a little disappointing, given the buildup, but I'm all for disappointing. I feel bad for the folks still without power almost a week later. I'm glad we weren't among them because we definitely didn't pack enough food, etc. for any length of power failure. Some lessons learned for next time. Hope everyone else fared reasonably well as well.

Earthquake

No fun or funny images of earthquake damage, I'm afraid. I was chatting with our HR director, who had just returned from a trip home to Grenada. As she updated me on all the things she did in three weeks (which I never managed to do in my three months or so there), we started to look at each other to figure out whether the other was feeling the weird sensation of movement. A third person in the lunch room broke the silence and asked if it was an earthquake. I said that if it was, it should last in the neighborhood of a thirty seconds, unlike something dropping or blowing up or something.

Then - now this is really cool - I felt the floor start moving in a different direction. I couldn't tell you what the new direction was, but it was definitely a DIFFERENT direction. For example, at first it was going up and down, then it switched to being left to right. That confirmed to me that it was an earthquake because earthquakes actually have three different sets of waves that shake you, some more damaging than others. This was something I had learned while researching my new school program on waves (earthquakes are waves that move through the Earth's surface and can be modeled like ocean or sound waves - for a fun demo at home, check out "Dynamic Earth - Tsunami"). Even for the earthquake in England, which was the first I had felt, I hadn't felt this change in direction thing. So it was pretty cool. Being this far away from the epicenter (somewhere in Virginia), we didn't see any damage at home or at work. Just some pretty creeped out coworkers and folks in general.

I think the funniest thing about the earthquake was all the discussion we had with our safety manager on staff at the next all staff meeting. We informally assessed which parts of the building shook the most, discussed what we should do in case of another strong earthquake (to evacuate or not to evacuate, that was the question), etc. We spent almost an hour on it. However, we spent zero time talking about the PREDICTABLE natural disaster scheduled to hit us later in the week - Hurricane Irene. Preparations for that didn't really get squared away until less than 48 hours before she hit. But that's the subject for another post.

Birthday Update

I'm a little behind on posting, so this may be a multi-installment post. For my birthday, my dad came out to visit and REALLY wanted to see Palisades Park. So we prepared for a bit of hiking and some scenic views in lovely NJ. We started with a visit to historic Fort Lee, famous for George Washington's ingenious retreat to save what remained of the revolutionary army (bearing in mind that history is written by the victors). After 30 minutes or so of dashing to every corner of the visitor center, Penny had seen about all she wanted. She then proceeded to enjoy her echo in the vacuous and deserted center. After the third or fourth comment from the very bored looking docent, I decided it was time to explore the outdoor portion of the park, leaving Dan and Dad to read everything and perhaps summarize the details when they finished. Outside there was this lovely cart just sitting around waiting for a Mommy to pull it somewhere. As we paused for photos, though, a loud clap of thunder drew my attention to the menacing clouds overhead.

Penny and I popped back into the visitor center to notify the guys that we were headed to the car before the impending storm. They seemed confused by our departure - perhaps hadn't seen the dirty looks or heard the slightly annoyed comments. We made it nice and dry and were exploring the dashboard when the giant wet blobs began appearing on the windshield. With the parking lot so far from the front of the visitor center, Dan was pretty wet when he made it in. Dad, undeterred by the approaching tempest, decided he'd hop among the dry shadows of the trees through the reconstructed portion of the fort. Now, they didn't have the whole fort reconstructed, just examples of some of the kinds of structures that would have been there during various periods, plus the wind was driving the rain into those tree shadows. So I headed out with an umbrella to convince Dad we'd be able to come back out when things dried off a bit. We were pretty soaked from the shoulders down by the time we returned to the car.

We headed off at a slow crawl along the cliffside road. It was a nice enough road, with a little masonry wall along the outer cliff. However, the 20 foot visibility due to torrential rain coupled with the insanity of local drivers still going 35mph around blind curves made it a bit more harrowing than it would have normally been. Dan cruised along at what would on any other day be considered a leisurely 20mph pace through the thrashing and lovely trees. There was one that had leaves as big as Penny! As we made our way through the canopy, there were occasional breaks, where we could almost make out the opposite shore of the Hudson River - perhaps that was a bit of Harlem there, some Bronx?

After what likely seemed to Dan a white-knuckled eternity, we made it to Closter Dock. We always take the Closter Dock Road to exit to my brother-in-law's place. Who knew there was an actual marina still there on the Hudson that you could visit?! We took the opportune break in the deluge to park and stroll around for a bit, noting the sign that said the parking lot flooded at high tide and the current level of the tide. Penny followed the sound of children's laughter to a very nice stone picnic shelter where an Indian family was enjoying the dryness and lack of competition on a rainy day. Penny soon found herself eating jalapeno potato chips, Chips Ahoy cookies and participating in a game of soccer. It was tough prying her away, but she was genuinely more hungry than a few cookies would cover, so we managed to lure her back to the car.

At a lovely cafe at the top of the cliff, we enjoyed burgers and a cliff-top view of the Hudson Valley. Across the way, the wooded Westchester County looked enticing. Birds of prey and vultures soared on the updrafts just outside the window as bicyclists and hikers slowly started to re-emerge in the extended dry and sunny spell. We enjoyed a little walk outside, spotted a skink and some other wildlife, then headed home for well-deserved naps.

My birthday itself (a Monday) was fairly low-key. Dad stayed for breakfast, then headed into the long drive back to Ohio. Penny and I did a little chalking on the front walk, some dancing (she really likes the timer for the Cranium game), and then we baked a black forest cake. Perhaps a bit boring for most, but Daddy even played hooky for the day (taking the USMLE step 2 on Saturday had left him feeling ill), so it was nice having everyone in the family together for two whole days straight. Not a bad birthday overall, to be sure.

Found one!

One of my ongoing stresses in pregnancy has been finding a hospital and care provider that would give me anything mildly resembling the experience I had delivering Penny in England. In England, the default was for my checkups to be done with midwives and delivery in hospital to be handled by midwives. OBs are only called in upon request, for high risk or when something has already gone wrong. When I go to the hospital, I was asked what position I felt comfy in- birthing ball, chair, floor, squatting, bed, whatever I wanted- and they'd supply that setup. I chose hands and knees on floor. Since Penny was already crowning, there wasn't much chance for an epidural, but lots of other options were pushed rather than that so the mom could be mobile.

Here in the US, when I described being on hands and knees on the floor, it was instant shut down from every care provider I talked to. The floor is dirty- no duh, they didn't have me down on the linoleum! Having gone to see a high risk doctor, some midwives wouldn't even consider taking me on because they ONLY deal with low risk deliveries. Most midwives here seem to do home deliveries or simply assist with ye standard in a bed deliveries.

I really wanted to stay on Staten Island for delivery since Penny seemed pretty fast, but my hospital options were limited (two hospitals). The rooms in my nearest hospital were so small, Dan would have had to stand through the whole delivery because there was no room beside the bed for a chair, let alone room for me to walk. The doctor I was seeing didn't work at the other one, plus I don't feel like going back to where we lost Augustine - not that it was their fault, but the big delivery room is exactly the room where I delivered last time. Plus I don't want to risk running into the less than stellar bedside manner of my former care providers in that scene.

So I broadened my search to Brooklyn. I emailed the one- uno- free standing birth center in the city to see if they knew someone who would give me their style of delivery in a hospital setting. The birth center makes me a little nervous because I want to be able to shout and get an OB. There, you have to drive yourself to the hospital if things aren't going to plan. They were kind enough to refer me to two midwife practices- one that takes my insurance and another that will work out an out of pocket payment plan for delivery costs (that doesn't include all the hospital and other peripheral costs). Since we're not made of money I went to the one who takes our insurance.

The midwife I met with seems very reasonable and nice. She didn't listen much, but tried to provide an overview of their experience and philosophy. Their practice has worked at NY Methodist Hospital for around two decades. When they're not being midwives, they're labor and delivery nurses at this hospital, so they're well-integrated into the culture there. They know which staff mmatch their philosophy and which to avoid. They consult on cases like mine with the chief of labor and delivery, so they've got reliable backup in case something comes up. They reviewed my history before they agreed to take me on. The major condition they imposed was that I had to go on baby aspirin immediately. I'm not thrilled about that because there are potential risks, especially later on, but it's minimally invasive as things go.

I get to go for lots of regular sonograms to check fluid levels and growth, but that likely would have been true for whoever I saw from this point in the pregnancy. Just stuff to be on the safe side. It cuts into reserving my time to spend with the baby when she comes, which is frustrating. I don’t have much to begin with. But what can I do? I'm back in the US where our system doesn't value having parents raise kids instead of daycare doing it. I've already been told that I can't exceed three months off, even with unpaid leave. Bit of a ripoff, if you ask me. Especially since a coworker got unpaid leave so she could stay with her baby for six months. Not sure why I get the shaft. Maybe when the HR director gets back from her month long vacation I can ask her.

So I've at least found care providers who seem aligned with what I want and potentially a hospital I can live with. I haven't figured out when to leave work or how long because it all seems to short compared to the time I had with penny. I can't fathom commuting to Brooklyn with a little one at home who's not sleeping through the night. Not to mention that my commute is so long i'd have to feed or pump immediately on either end of it. Something about the whole process seems very wrong indeed. Why is our system so designed to make women miserable? Why can't I have the fulfillment of gainful employment AND of taking a bit of time off to welcome a new family member?

posted from Bloggeroid

Where in the World is Dan this Week?

It occurs to me that even though he's one of the most important people in our lives, Dan doesn't really show up in my blog all that often. With some determination and plenty of good studying, he finished up his third year of medical school last week. Woohoo!

The PLAN was for him to take off the two weeks between his academic years to study and take the next step in his licensing exams, the step 2 of the USMLE. However, due to flooding at the test center in Chicago, the testing folks canceled his appointment and have promised to fit him in at one of the other eight testing centers some time between now and the new year. Ummm... yeah, not the greatest of news. For whatever reason, NYC is not one of the testing centers so as it stands whenever someone cancels anywhere else in the country, he needs to be at the top of his game and ready to pay an exorbitant fee to fly at the last second to wherever to take the test. He's a student and must start his fourth year rotations, where he doesn't get sick days or anything, so he'll catch grief when he takes off to take his test. Plus, as a foreign medical student, he's at a bit of a disadvantage to the folks who attend schools here in the US. He thought perhaps some really good test scores would help him as he headed into interviews with potential residencies. Those interviews start as early as September, but should be pretty much done by January or so (I think). So much for having those nice scores under his belt when he shows up.

Now, since the reasoning behind the time off was creamed, he contemplated just starting fourth year a bit early and maybe being able to take off those two weeks later. But, thankfully, he decided that everybody needs a break some time. It's true, right?! So he has been interspersing studying with some down time. Among his many pursuits, he has brought out some of his Lego collection and enjoyed recreating scenes from various movies. Here we see the emporer greeting his troops. His conclusion from setting up - either he needs a lot more troops or a smaller baseplate to arrange them upon. I voted for the latter, but I don't know if my voice was heard over the music.

So it has been fun having him around a bit more for a short while...even contemplating the occasional excursion or night out. We have mostly enjoyed nights in so far, but even that is a more than welcome change of pace. There may have been a higher proportion of baking projects occurring in the house over the past week to encourage such behavior. But he has recently restarted his gym membership, so that all works out just fine. I believe this opportunity has brought home the extent of the collection and the daunting task of finding the right venue for sharing it with others - we're going to HAVE to have a whole room for where these go. Someday.

Hot Time in Town

There are any number of ways to beat the heat in NYC - fire hydrants, water parks, sprinklers in city parks even. For some reason, with our recent heat wave, we didn't really take advantage of any of them. We have, however, been having fun nonetheless. On Monday, before I realized we were in the middle of a heat wave, I decided to go to the local park with Penny. Mom was running errands and it's only 10-15 blocks to the local middle school with a playground, so I figured no problem walking. Penny and I set out with our adventure hats (which had been gathering quite a bit of dust since we got back from Grenada), snacks and plenty of water at, oh, 10:30am. It felt like that slog to church on a Grenada Sunday. It was brutal. While I recovered in the shade of the playset, Penny burnt herself on the slide and ran around for a little in the blistering sun before joining me in the shade. Then we had the brainstorm of enjoying the little trike that someone had left. Penny had a great time driving it around. It was her first real opportunity steering because her little toy car at home doesn't appreciably turn when you turn the wheel. You can see the confusion when she approaches the curb in the video - just starts turning from side to side instead of choosing a direction and going with it. We did a few bumps into the wall rather than me correcting the problem all the time - sometimes you have to learn the hard way. From the giggling, though, I don't think it was a very hard way.

NYC is also home to a remarkable array of beaches, so why not beat the heat there, you ask? Well... The sewage treatment plant in Harlem caught fire on Tuesday and has been spewing raw sewage into the local rivers for close to a week. The beaches clear down to Staten Island are closed until, well... I can't say that I'll be putting my toes into the water any time soon. The Jersey Shore almost sounded appealing until we started adding up the price tags and how early we'd have to get there in order to get there. So, our friends Julie and Liam proposed a trip to Governor's Island, located in NY Harbor and a mere two free ferry rides away. It has no potable water, but lots of fun walks, free bike rentals, and even some air conditioned art galleries to enjoy. Penny even found a beach/giant sand box (with no contact with the water) and friends with toys. So it all worked out nicely. Meeting up with Julie and Liam, though, brought home the idea that maybe we need to arrange a nice Flats reunion - it seems that almost all of us are expecting and due at about the same time, so we might have a hard time traveling if we wait too much longer to get together.

Passenger Pics

Today was a whirlwind adventure, to be sure. We started off the day with a visit to the doctor for our last official look at the passenger before his big arrival. Now, we may get another look if I get panicky or something, but this is the last SCHEDULED look...the one that is especially exciting because you get a real good preview of the new family member. Penny tagged along because Mom wasn't feeling up to watching her this morning.

Penny had a great time sitting next to me on the recliner, watching the baby on the screen. Looking at his legs, saying "Brain!" and "He's a scary monster" and other such fun things. She REALLY wanted to take my blood pressure with the cuff on the wall since she knows how to work one (come on, there's a doctor in the house!) and she knows the one at the office would work better than the toy one at home. She was pretty cute and remarkably patient, considering the appointment went from 8:30am until about 11am. I seem to have a penchant for choosing doctors with a long wait/visit time.

Because she'd been so good and it's relatively close, we went to the beach afterward. It's a NYC beach, so we had to dodge the tampons and other random trash, but she really enjoyed looking at shells, checking out the birds and even the teeny mussels I pointed out on the pilings. She was scared to let the water touch her at first, but eventually warmed up to it and even started playing as if the waves were sucking her in as they rolled back out. Thankfully, that led to nothing more than splashing a little above the knee, because even I'm a little wary of the harbor water around here. We didn't spend much time there because it was brutally hot and she started getting hungry for lunch. We had a little KFC picnic on a blanket in a shady nearby neighborhood, then headed off to the eye doctor so Mommy could get some contacts.

There were two reasons I needed to get contacts. One, I've got awesome eye benefits for once in my life. Two, Penny's been doing a lot of diving at me and really brutal head hugs that drive my glasses frames into some tender spots on my head. Now we were in prime nap time, so the eye doctor was more of a struggle, but she continued to generally not be horrible, so we went to the "Once Upon a Child" next door and picked up some pretty cool used toys (kitchen for only $10!). Having missed nap time, we toughed out the rest of the evening at home.

So, we're having a really tough time recently with Penny. She is getting considerably more willful and sobbing a lot whenever she doesn't get her way. It's pretty darned obnoxious. Then when we hug to make up, she's darned violent, taking dives at my lap and squeezing my head with all her might. I've been losing it with her on a regular basis it seems, yelling at the top of my voice or shoving her away after she throws herself at me for the umpteenth time. This, of course, just leads to more crying, which then requires a makeup hug that goes awry, ad infinitum.

In talking with a friend of mine, she mentioned that she had been a real bear with her existing kid during her most recent pregnancy and now that the new baby is starting to sleep on a regular basis, she is only slowly regaining her patience. She said she wouldn't want to have more kids because it would be unfair to the existing ones for her to be short with them for a full two years. I mentioned this to Dan and it seemed to provide him a great deal of relief to hear me expressing a similar sentiment about my behavior with Penny. I know I've been short with her a lot and I definitely regret a lot of it. I'll admit I am in a bad state of mind at times. Some of it, though, I'd like to think is more driven by the phase she's going through being a real trial of patience. Hopefully we'll figure out some coping/discipline strategies that will allow us to address some of the challenges and make our household a little less loud and crazy. In the meantime, keep us in your prayers as we figure out the new phase.

July 4th Fun

Apparently, the fourth of July was so much fun I didn't have a chance to take any pictures! We were invited to spend the fourth with the extended family of a cousin's girlfriend. It reminded me a lot of the holidays I enjoyed growing up, so was quite nice.

Dan's experience of New Jersey has largely been limited to the suburbs of NYC- a bed of oil refineries and swampland to absorb the pollution from said refineries. There's the occasional foray to his brother's house, which is a pretty wealthy suburb kind of neighborhood. The rest he's seen from the comfort of his car on the NJ Turnpike. He always thought there must be some secret section hiding out there for their license plates to claim NJ is" the Garden State."

This weekend, we got to discover that well-kept secret. We headed out to Monroeville, a teeny town with the nearest big highway sign being Camden, NJ. This is not a resounding endorsement for those of you not familiar with east coast geography/politics. How many cities have had to hold emergency elections because the sitting mayor was indicted on drug trafficing and other charges? We suspended disbelief and forged onward, though, and soon found ourselves among peach orchards and wooded loveliness. Our little GPS even successfully directed us along the little dirt road to the house.

We were graciously greeted and over the subsequent hours thoroughly stuffed with fresh local food of all kinds. We enjoyed picking fresh raspberries for a fruit pizza. I probably fed Penny at least enough for one of those little grocery store containers, but she just kept asking for more and the were pretty delicious. Corn was freshly shucked and prepared, there were an amazing array of peach and blueberry pies with homemade crusts...just awesome.

Penny thoroughly enjoyed the variety of activities and wildlife. While sitting on the porch, we spied a little preying mantis and watched him for a bit. He let Penny get quite close. Then he hunkered down and made a great leap right onto her face. Obviously, she was pretty startled and stood up with her eyes wide. I gently pulled the little guy off her lips and nose and asked,
"Whoa! Was that scary, Penny?"
"No." (Admittedly a little shaky.)
"Were you surprised?"
"Yes."
"He must have wanted to give you a kiss. Was that pretty silly?"
She took her time about it, but the shock only took maybe a minute to wear off. She did do a little giggling about how silly the bug was. Then we were back to watching the little guy. She may have done most of her watching from the opposite side of the table, but isn't wisdom the better part of valor anyway? Our inexperienced little bug friend appeared to have met his end before dinner was over- I saw him spirited away by a yellow jacket (ye standard picnic wasp). Last I saw, the mantis lay motionless in the grass as the wasp nibbled at his ear.

The big attraction for the afternoon was the pool. I haven't been able to convince Penny to enter the pool since we left Grenada. Sure, she went to the neighbor's last week, but she wanted out as soon as she got in, then played precariously on the ladder for 30 minutes or so. Oh, yesterday was different! I put on her little cloth swimmy diaper and surf shirt (I do splurge when it comes to pool wear). I put on my swim suit, purchased the week we first suspected the passenger's presence. I slathered on the sunblock and in we went. Penny had a blast and a half. She was kicking around, playing with her dad (though only willing to swim with me), giggling like there was no tomorrow. With chattering teeth and thoroughly blue lips, she insisted she wasn't ready to leave the pool. It was only the promiof returning once she warmed up that allowed me to extract her from the wet wonderful pool.

We went inside and got dressed and she was just laying down for a nap on a teenager's bed that reminded me an awful lot of my sister's, when we had a diaper failure. I acted as fast as I could, but some fluid did make it onto the mattress. Eek! Stranger's house and we just wet the bed of the teenager who had been coaxed into letting us borrow the room. On the plus side, Penny had refused to sleep with ANY of the native bedding. Didn't save the mattress, all the same. I was able to tell our hostess, who took it in stride, saying they have grandkids stay on a regular basis, so it's not like it hasn't happened before. Go for folks who know how to make you feel welcome, even when you feel like you haven't been the best guest.

We loaded up on some more desserts before we finally headed home at 7pm or so. Penny set some kind of record for spped of falling asleep in the car. All in all a great day.

posted from Bloggeroid

Summer starts

Yesterday was the last day for public schools in our area and public pools open today, so summer is officially underway. Penny celebrated with our next door neighbors, who happen to have thw full array of aquatic fun installed at their house.


We got home from work last night and in the short span from then til bedtime, Penny enjoyed dashing through the sprinkler, swimming (briefly) in the pool and chomping on her first icee pop. What's more definitively summer than that? I was excited that she finally agreed to wear the swimsuit I impulsively purchased back in March when we stayed at a hotel with a pool and I really wanted to use it. Unfortunately, I don't know that the suit I got myself on that trip will get to see any use any time soon. I tried to buy something that might look good around now, but I don't know, pregnancy and swimsuits don't totally go together in my book. Maybe I'll be bold and try it out. We'll see.

posted from Bloggeroid

Picnic in the park

We had yet another fun weekend with extended family on Sunday. This week, we celebrated an adult cousin's birthday by heading out for a picnic after church. Though originally scheduled as a NJ picnic, we took about two hours to prep and folks weren't up for another one hour drive before we opened our no longer steamy vats of fried chicken, biscuits and other goodies. So we took the opportunity to visit one of our local natural playgrounds, Wolfe's Pond city park. The threat of storms any minute kept the table competition minimal and we thoroughly enjoyed quite the banquet.

After our meal, the boys (including our guest of honor) enjoyed passing around a football, kickball and a couple of frisbees. It was kind of fum keeping so many projectiles in the air simultaneously. Aim was such that everyone got a solid running workout from the afternoon. Even my mother-in-law got in on the frisbee action at some point.

Penny was beside herself to see a real frisbee in action. Previously, she had only seen the on the Wii Sports Resort game as a little disk you throw to a puppy to catch. Whenever she managed to snag the frisbee, she would toss it to me, tell me to pick it up in my mouth and return it to her. Sometimes I'd be the retriever, other times I tossed it to her and she returned it to me via her mouth. The evil and infectious laughter was too cute. At one point, Daddy threw it to her from across the field. It was an excellent shot from a fair distance and I keep wondering whether she planned to try catching it in her mouth like the puppies on the game do. Regardless of her plan, the frisbee made its way inexorably toward her head until it came to a jolting halt on the bridge of her nose. Thankfully we were outside, otherwise the collective gasp of shock would have sucked all the air out of the room. And she needed all the air she could get for that first ear-shattering wail. She pinned her hands to her nose so tight I couldn't properly assess the damage. Dr. Dad crossed the field in a heartbeat, but was no more successful than I, so I set him to work on a teeny little ice pack back at the cooler. The novelty of the ice pack was almost as effective as the numbness it was intended to induce, because Penny stopped crying as soon as it touched her nose. She looks a little stunned in this picture, but I think that's more lack of nap than injury related because it was taken an hour or more after the incident.


Penny did recover completely. It was actually somewhat fortuitous because previously she had been so excited to play that she skipped eating. Her recovery period was spent catching up on lunch/dinner. Later, she rejoined the frisbee game, though everyone threw well away from her or tried to convince her to go to the playground. So there is no permanent frisbee-phobia affiliated with the event. Dan, I think, continues to feel pretty bad as there's a respectable visual reminder and it causes flashbacks to a certain previous frisbee victim. I tried to joke with him that he was just helping her have my nose (somewhat off-center due to a sporting accident of my own in my youth).

In other news, our 17 week checkup went lovely. A certain little someone enjoys squiggling away from the doppler, so it took a while to get a heart rate reading. She's doing well so far, though. I think Dan officially agreed that he didn't want to find out in advance, which is a nice relief because I wasn't sure logistically how I could maintain ignorance if he knew. It just seemed like it would have slipped out at some point. It's hard to verbalize why I don't want to know, but based on Dan's description of his reasoning, we're pretty much on the same page.

I was a little weepy at the appointment because it was the first time I've talked with the doctor about the delivery room. Even when I was pregnant with Augustine, the thought of delivering the standard US way was very stressful for me. I just hate the idea of being confined to a bed for hours on end when I could be doing useful things to help the process along and make it easier on myself and the baby. I don't understand why I have to go to a crunchy granola place to get what I want instead of a hospital, where they are better equipped to handle complications. Dan was reading one hospital's description of their midwife services aloud and just interrupted himself with a "...let's see if they can mention "low risk pregnancies one more time." I don't relish diving into the search for the right delivery location/care provider all over again. Plus, my current doctor was awesome about listening to me and recognizing what I was actually asking for. He didn't call me a nut (like my previous nyc midwife did), tell me it was absolutely inadvisable, just that hospital restrictions would make it tough for me to find. He recommended some good places to start the search. I like him a lot, so it seems a shame to ditch him. I really want someone whom I know at my delivery, though, and as THE guy who handles high risk deliveries, there's just no way to guarantee that. We'll see how the search goes and he will stick with me until we find what makes the most sense.

posted from Bloggeroid

Birthday Extravaganza

Through a bit of a scheduling snafu, this weekend was jam-packed with family birthday fun. Even though it was a little hectic, each party had its own perks and Penny thoroughly enjoyed herself. After church we walked with birthday boy Christopher to his grandma's house for a little lunch and yummy cupcakes. Penny was very excited for Christopher, even going so far as to insert HIS name into her usual rendition of the birthday song (ok, maybe only for one verse, with the rest of the verses being "Happy birthday to Penny" still). She let him open his own presents and only tried to walk off with the balloon once. Not too bad for someone who's convinced her birthday is every week.

From there, we headed to New Jersey for cousin Aneesa's tea party. Her birthday had been spent at our house sick in bed with a nasty fever while her parents were in Paris, so this was definitely a nice makeup for that. The first exciting surprise was when Cinderella emerged from the house and greeted all the guests in the backyard. Cinderella is Penny's absolute favorite Disney character. She often sings the songs from the movie and dresses up in her beautiful dress just to dance around the living room. It was a little intimidating meeting such a big hero, though, so it took her a while to introduce herself. When Cinderella pulled out a rack of fancy dresses for everyone to wear to their princess practice, Penny declined. She was already wearing what she calls her "Cee-erella dress." She happily joined in on the dancing, procured a tiara, and even sat in for some Disney trivia.

After a quick dinner of cookies and nachos, Penny helped out with finishing off the pinata. Her uncle was so impressed with her burgeoning swing, that he gave her the bat to take home. As you can see in the video, I have reason to be a bit hesitant - I don't think her swing needs to be any stronger when it is too easily directed at parents. I'm leaning toward making this an outdoor toy.


Sort of a fun add on for the weekend was a little friend I happened to introduce Penny to on Monday. There was a lovely cicada sitting on the clothesline and I brought it into the house for Penny to see. She was very polite and offered it something to eat. I told her the cicada likes to eat trees, so she invited it to sit on Daddy's tree, then got the tree some water to drink. I love how friendly she is with the bugs I introduce her to. She has been reluctant to let them walk on her, but she pets them on occasion and usually talks to them very nicely. She's so cute sometimes.