16-week belly

Well, as promised, belly shots. First, here I am yesterday, at 16 weeks:

And here I am at seven weeks, same pregnancy:

 

And for comparison, here I am at 16 weeks with Callum:

 

So... yeah. The difference is noticeable, yes? I dug through my Callum photos and tried to figure out which one most closely resembles what I look like now. I decided it's this 22-week photo, but I generally seem to be carrying differently this time... maybe a little higher and rounder? Who knows, but there you go. 16 weeks pregnant and looking... well, pregnant. Enough that I got my first pregnancy comment from a stranger this weekend! Last time that didn't happen until at least 22 weeks. I will take it!

Pregnancy catch-up

You guys were all so sweet with the congratulations yesterday. It's so interesting how much social media has changed since my last pregnancy--then, I was on Twitter but it wasn't as big as it is now, and the blog was the main communication portal. This time the blog was more like the vehicle to say more than I could ever fit into 140 characters, but most of the communication about it happened on Twitter.

Anyway, sorry for pulling the traditional stop-blogging-in-the-first-trimester (though in my defense, I did actually start blogging less frequently before I got pregnant... wait, that's not really a defense) on you, and honestly, I don't think I'm going to suddenly start blogging every day or anything, but now that I can talk about everything that's going on in my life, I'm hoping to post at least a little more often.

So! Pregnancy! Let's do a brief catch-up on the last 15 weeks. My pregnancy with Callum was super easy after I got over the month of miserable morning sickness, and so far (knock wood), this one has been very similar, except even easier because I avoided the morning sickness. With Callum, after a month of feeling seasick nonstop and throwing up multiple times a day, I realized that my lap-band was making things worse, and had it emptied, which pretty much fixed the morning sickness instantly. So, this time as soon as I started feeling sick around 7 weeks, I had my band emptied and... bam. All better. It was amazing. (Also, I'm slightly annoyed that I suffered so badly with Callum for a whole month for no reason, but whatever.)

So! First trimester extreme fatigue, smell aversion, bloating, and so forth, but at least I wasn't puking! Did you know that everything is SO MUCH BETTER when you aren't puking? Because it is! And now that I'm solidly in the second trimester, the fatigue has been starting to lift (thank goodness, because it turns out when you have a toddler it's much harder to indulge in a two-hour daily nap the way I did the first time) and I've been feeling mostly pretty good. And am really looking forward to this next part.

I've also been much less anxious this time around. Obviously I still have my moments of wondering if everything is OK in there (currently in one of those as I'm nearing a month since my last visit and would like to just get a quick listen to that heartbeat again to make sure all is well) but generally I've been able to trust that things are probably fine, and not worry about it constantly, so that's been pleasant.

Also, don't laugh at me, but I swear (I SWEAR) that I've been feeling movement since 10 weeks. That's insane, right? With Callum I felt movement starting at 15.5 weeks, which seemed surprisingly early for a first baby, especially since I had an anterior placenta and am not a skinny person, so I was dubious if it was really movement for a long time, but it just got stronger and more frequent until there was no longer any doubting. And the same thing seems to be happening this time (and also at 12 weeks they told me my placenta is "developing posteriorly" this time), except it started much earlier. At 10 weeks I felt some distinct fluttering, and in the weeks since it's only gotten stronger and more frequent. At this point I'd say I'm 95% sure that it's baby movement, but not yet 100% convinced.

Also, we do plan to find out what it is, if the baby cooperates, at our ultrasound next month. I'm kind of torn on what I would prefer. A girl would be great, of course, but I also love the idea of brothers, so really, we can't go wrong. Torsten, on the other hand, has a slight (he claims) preference for another boy. So we will see. Like last time, I have no real gut feelings or guesses at all. In fact, trying to visualize this baby as a boy or a girl feels weird and strange to me. But maybe that's some sort of self-defense mechanism because with Callum I assumed it was a girl (not because of any maternal instinct or anything but because I grew up with a sister and it seemed like everyone in my family had girls, so I just figured that's what we would have). And then when the tech told us that it was a boy I felt really disconnected for a minute, like she was talking about someone else's baby, because I'd been thinking, to an extent I wasn't aware of, that it was a girl. So! This time I'm apparently trying to avoid that, even though it was no big deal last time because it took me literally one minute to go from, "Wait, THIS baby, MY baby?" to "OMG A BOY THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER."

Last thing... Callum. At 28 months I don't think he's quite ready to grasp the concept of a baby growing in my belly who will eventually come home to live with us (though he could understand the more concrete aspects of that idea), and he's certainly not ready to grasp the idea that it will be another five or six months before this happens, so we haven't tried to explain it to him in detail. But we have bought some books about new babies and becoming a big brother to try to familiarize him with the general concept, and we do talk about how there's a baby in my belly and ask him if he wants to be a big brother (he almost always says yes, but he has no idea what he's agreeing to), and we told daycare about it so that they can help him adjust to the idea too, and then when it gets a bit closer and he's a bit older we'll hopefully sort of move naturally toward telling him about it in more detail. But mostly I'm just really excited for him to be an older brother. He is incredibly patient and laid-back (gauging with a toddler yardstick here, of course), and he really likes babies, and I can just see how he'll be such a beautiful big brother, which isn't to say that I don't expect the transition period to be challenging for him, but just that in the long term I'm really hopeful that this will turn out to be a great sibling relationship. And if you guys have any suggestions about how to make the sibling adjustment period easier, or books you liked, or anything like that, I'd love to hear them (he'll be about 2.75 years old when his sibling arrives).

So, there's a brain dump of what's been going on in my head during the early part of this pregnancy. Mostly we're just really excited. A BABY! I still can't quite believe that we get to do this all again.

Our little penguin

Last time it was a piglet...

This time it's a penguin:

Our own little penguin is due on November 3.

And for those who prefer to visualize the actual fetus instead of a watercolor penguin, here's the profile shot from 12 weeks. Pointy little nose, huh?

(Also, those people who say you show a lot earlier with your second? Really not kidding. I'm 15.5 weeks at the moment and I look about as pregnant as I looked at 20 weeks with Callum. Will work on some belly photos for you guys next week.)

1984

We recently bought an IP cam for Callum's room to replace our dying (and crappy) video monitor. It's awesome in a ton of ways. In fact, we had wanted one when we originally got the video monitor, but at the time we didn't have iPhones or iPads and we wanted something portable, not something that required a laptop to check, so we went with the traditional monitor.

(My, how things have changed in just two years, huh?)

Anyway, the IP cam is amazing. It has awesome resolution. We can see when his eyes are open at night. We can see exactly where he is and what he is doing. It's just so much clearer than the video monitor, and therefore much more useful.

The video monitor--for us--wasn't really necessary when Callum was a baby. He was just a lump and there was nothing to see. But now that he's a toddler, it's incredibly useful. Especially now that he's not sleeping in a crib anymore and can get out of bed on his own, it's extremely helpful to be able to see what he's doing.

Which leads me to my next point... we are basically spying on him. Which we always have been doing, but it feels like more, somehow, because a) we can see a lot better, and b) he's older and has a bit more autonomy. I mean, it's not like he's doing private things that we shouldn't be watching. But it feels more invasive now than it did a year ago.

The biggest thing, though, that really makes me feel like Big Brother is that we can talk to him over the camera, and as far as I can tell, he thinks that the Voice that Issues Forth is some sort of Omniscient Being that Must Be Obeyed.

Which is great. GREAT. When he hops out of bed at naptime and romps around the room, we can get on the mic and tell him to get in bed and go to sleep... AND HE DOES. If we went to his room to tell him that, we would get nowhere. But over the camera? IMMEDIATE OBEDIENCE. It's a little scary, really.

Also, at first only Torsten talked over the camera mic, and then one time he wasn't there and I did it and Callum burst into tears. He obeyed and lay down in bed, but he was crying for Mommy. So I got on the mic again and told him that everything was OK and he didn't need to cry. And he stopped. And went to sleep. For two hours. It was magical.

BUT when I went into his room to get him up after his nap, the SECOND I cracked open the door to the room he pointed right at the camera and said "Woman! Woman not sleeping!"

So it clearly made an impression, is my point. And also, he definitely doesn't seem to understand that the voices coming over the mic are Mommy and Daddy and not some scary third-party observer/authority. Which seems to work in our favor, as far as getting him to do things that we would like him to do, like stop throwing a party and go to sleep. But it makes me feel bad! The poor kid! He seriously must feel like he's living in 1984. I actually tried to explain to him that it's just Mommy and Daddy talking to him, but I don't think he quite grasped that.

So! Effective parenting technique, apparently, but also maybe a little cruel? But it's not like I'm going to stop using it. Though that brings me to another question... when DO we stop using it? Not just the mic but the whole camera? I can only assume that over the next year or two, it will become even more interesting and useful to watch him on the camera. But at some point he WILL need privacy, or at least the awareness that he has a space to himself that isn't being monitored. And I'm starting to think that it may not be immediately obvious to us when we've reached that point.

What about you? People who use video monitors, when are you planning to stop? (Or when did you stop, if your kids are a little older?)

Mattress: A Horror Story

I believe I mentioned on Twitter at the end of last week that Callum climbed out of his crib for the first time. Sort of a typical two-year-old thing to do and something we'd been anticipating for awhile, actually, since he's so tall, so not exactly an earth-shattering moment, though we were hoping to get a couple more months out of the crib, but you know, whatever.

Regardless, the whole crib climbing thing is just backstory, designed to illustrate why, on Friday evening, we drove a few miles down the interstate to purchase a new, double mattress for Callum to use. We found a good quality, reasonably priced mattress that we liked, and then we found a floor model on sale for half the price, so we bought it, but it didn't come with delivery. That was fine, though, the salesman assured us, because we have a good solid SUV and he had a big spool of twine and he ties mattresses to cars all the time! It's no big deal!

So. We bought the mattress. We hauled it out to the car. The mattress store manager tied it solidly to the roof with twine. He assured us it wouldn't budge. The three of us (Callum was with us too) climbed in the car and drove cautiously away.

You see where this is going, right? I don't even have to tell you the end of this story, do I, because you already know what's coming, don't you?

Yeah. We trundled cautiously along, the mattress seemed secure, we drove up the entrance ramp onto the highway... and close to the end of the ramp, when we had gotten up to maybe 50 MPH or so, the mattress caught the wind, lifted like a sail, tore right through the "no-budging" twine, and flew off the back of our car onto the highway. I saw the whole thing happen, through our sunroof, and OMG. TERRIFYING.

You guys, we were so, so lucky. The mattress didn't hit an oncoming car. It didn't land in a middle lane of speeding traffic. It landed half on the shoulder of the road, half on the entrance ramp. It was actually at a place where two entrance ramps merged, so it was extra wide, and there was plenty of room for cars to steer around it. It wasn't yet dark. It didn't end up causing an accident (damn, now I've gone and given away the ending of the story). Even the mattress itself was unscathed. It was all fine. FINE. But OH MY GOD.

So yeah. Our mattress flew off our car and landed on the highway. Torsten reacted well, and we pulled over onto the (narrow, barely as wide as our car) shoulder with our hazard lights on, staring at each other going OH MY GOD OH MY GOD WHAT DO WE DO OUR MATTRESS IS GOING TO CAUSE A HORRIBLE FATAL ACCIDENT.

After we collected ourselves, we assessed the situation to determine whether we could safely get out of the car and walk back to the mattress and... move it, somehow. We concluded that we could not. The shoulder was too narrow for us to walk safely--if someone was texting or not paying attention and swerved onto the shoulder, we'd be dead. Also, I was on the passenger side of the car and could get out fairly safely, but we'd need two people to lift the mattress and Torsten couldn't get out of the car without jumping directly into traffic (and the interior of our car is set up in such a way that it's nearly impossible to climb across). Also, Callum was in the car and we weren't about to leave him alone in a car parked on the shoulder of the interstate.

So, we called 911. I kind of felt like we were overreacting and maybe should be calling the non-emergency police number instead, but you know what? It was a really dangerous situation. There was a mattress lying in traffic. If someone hit that mattress at 50 MPH (or more), they would cause a serious accident. Meanwhile, we were parked on a narrow shoulder (with our child in the car), which didn't feel all too secure. Basically, we wanted that mattress off the road STAT. And the 911 operator seemed to agree. The second I told her "mattress on highway" she was all over me for location details and dispatched someone right away. I asked how long it would be and she said she didn't know, but that mattresses on the road were a high priority so it would be as soon as possible. She told us that if we felt safe where we were parked on the shoulder (borderline) we should just wait in the car for the police officer to arrive and come talk to us.

So that's what we did, and you guys, it was seriously the most terrifying experience of my entire life. It was getting dark, and we were sitting there on the shoulder of the highway trying (unsuccessfully) to convince ourselves not to stare at the mattress in the road behind us and all the cars veering around it at the last second at high speeds, convinced that every single one of them was going to hit the mattress and spin out into a horrible accident and be killed and OH MY GOD WHERE IS THE COP WHY ISN'T HE HERE YET THEY ARE ALWAYS EVERYWHERE HANDING OUT STUPID SPEEDING TICKETS BUT SOMEONE COULD ACTUALLY BE KILLED HERE SO WHY ARE THEY TAKING SO LONG. At one point a very nice man in a pickup truck pulled over and came to talk to us (he climbed out his passenger side, thankfully) and offered to help us pick it up but we told him it was too dangerous and thank you very much but please don't risk it, we will just wait for the police.

The cop did eventually show up, after 15 life-shortening minutes of tension and stress. He parked behind the mattress with his lights on and came over to talk to us and I got out of the car and he and I lifted the mattress over the concrete barrier into the grass on the other side and then he told us to just pull the broken twine into our car so that it wouldn't get caught under our tires and sent us on our way. He was incredibly nice and didn't lecture or give us a ticket or anything.

So yeah. We drove away, took the next exit, drove down the frontage road alongside the highway until we located the mattress, pulled into the parking lot near it, and sat there debating what to do. Obviously we couldn't put the mattress on the car again, even if the twine hadn't been broken. And it wouldn't fit in the car. We called the mattress store and spoke to the guy who had tied the damn thing on our car to begin with, and while he was somewhat sympathetic, he was also surprisingly detached and also completely useless. We racked our brains for friends who owned a truck, thought of one, and called them, but they weren't answering. Then we remembered that there was a Home Depot down the street and that they rent out pickup trucks, so we drove over there, rented a truck, drove back to the mattress, got it secured in the truck, caravaned home, left the mattress in our garage, and caravaned back to Home Depot to return the truck. And my heart did not stop pounding and I did not stop shaking during the entire experience.

Oh and also when we left the house to buy the mattress? We forgot the diaper bag and had no food or water for Callum. He was asking for it when we left the mattress store, and we told him we'd be home soon (HAHAHA) and he could have some then. But we didn't anticipate the slight 1.5-hour delay. And you guys, he was so sweet and patient. As we were on the side of the highway freaking out he sat in his car seat singing songs and occasionally asking for food and water but not getting upset when we told him we were really sorry but we didn't have any right now. In fact, the thing that made him most upset was when Torsten drove the Home Depot truck and we wouldn't let him ride in it too. ("Mommy bye-bye car. Daddy bye-bye truck! CALLUM BYE-BYE TRUCK??")

So yeah, basically Callum is a perfect angel child and he better REALLY like that new mattress. Also next time I'm paying for delivery, oh my god.

Oh, hi there.

Yes, I haven't posted in almost two months, my bad. I have no real excuse of any interest to anyone, just the usual life stuff that everyone deals with, so! Let's get right back into it with a bunch of bullets, shall we?

• For Callum's birthday, I made a rose cake. It turned out great. I used this tutorial and it was super easy. The only thing was that I didn't realize when I was doing the green flowers that it's best to work with cold icing (not a cake decorator over here...). I rectified this mistake before I did the blue flowers and they turned out much nicer and crisper.

• Let's see, for MY birthday we got a blizzard, and for some reason (and I really don't know what that reason could be, because we haven't had much snow this year so the city should have plenty of money left in the plow budget), it took forever to get the roads plowed, and they were very icy, so we ended up canceling our plans and staying home. So, my birthday is rescheduled for next weekend. Which is fine! Weeklong birthday! Whee! Also this weekend it's supposed to be pretty warm out so I can wear the springlike dress I had picked out for last weekend, which would definitely not have worked even if the roads had been drivable, given that it was about 10 degrees out. Brr.
• Will it be annoying if I write about a book I haven't even read? I have thoughts on European parenting that I'd like to share, but I haven't read Bringing Up Bebe, though I really should. Don't worry, I'm not going to criticize the book without reading it or anything. Just, the hype over it has been making me think. So yeah, I'm going to let that percolate for awhile and then I think I may have some thoughts to share.
• I'm partway into my third-to-last graduate class and it's really interesting and kind of like an MBA-style class and I like it a lot and yet I'm sooooo over it. I am just completely unmotivated and don't want to deal with it. Getting a master's degree is great and I know when it's done I'll be glad I did it but ugh, money and time and motivation and guilt over how I spend my free time, no thank you. If this is senioritis already then I'm screwed for the last two classes (bioethics and biology of disease, also known as the hardest two classes in the program, yayyyyy).
• Callum is just extremely delightful right now and it's really fun. I mean, he has his moments (see: post-bedtime tantrum when I refused to give in to his endless stalling attempts by singing infinite rotations of Twinkle Twinkle, Baa Baa Black Sheep, and Baby Beluga, and he screamed for half an hour like someone was torturing him with acid), but mostly he's just awesome. He talks SO MUCH, mostly in 3-5 word combinations and also in some simple sentences, and he just chats all the time, and he's figured out that Torsten speaks German and I speak English, and he's outgoing and hilarious and makes jokes and then yells, "FUNNY!" and he jumps constantly (and loooves his new gymnastics class, to nobody's surprise) and he's learned gender and is constantly pointing to strangers and identifying them (correctly, thankfully) as men or women and if someone does something for him and he doesn't know their name he'll say, "Thank you, woman/man," which oh my goodness, more of this, please. He's just the best.
• Also by now Callum loves daycare. We switched to Mondays and Tuesdays instead of Tuesdays and Thursdays and the two days in a row has made a huge difference. I think it really helps him to have his time chunked off so he has an idea of what to expect from day to day. There are no more tears at dropoff or pickup and he talks about his teachers and his "fends" (friends) constantly. He's really thriving and I'm so glad we decided to do this now instead of just throwing him into full-time preschool in the fall. I think the preschool transition will be much, much smoother thanks to his daycare experience.
• Things are good, in a non-earth-shattering, domestic-life-ish, wonderful kind of way. I feel very content. It's a nice way to feel.
• Here's what my kid is looking like these days. He's the king of ridiculous facial expressions. It's awesome.

Best surprise ever

I'm in DC for work right now, rather last-minute, in fact so much so that I had to leave two days before my parents' visit ended, which was rather unfortunate.

However, before I left, my sister and I managed to pull off what we personally consider the best surprise of all time... my sister and her daughter flew out to Denver for Callum's birthday and to surprise my parents during their visit. And we managed not to blow the secret beforehand, so it was a real surprise, and we got the whole thing on video.

So while I'm buried in work meetings, enjoy...