This was taken when Henry was 10 days old -

Henry - 10 days old

And this was taken today:

Henry - 4 Months old

Henry had a check-up at the doctor’s office today.  They weighed and measured Henry and then tested his development.  And then they gave him two shots; I’m pretty sure that was his favorite part…

At 4 months Henry now weighs 13lbs 3 oz. and is 24 3/4 inches long.  He’s gained almost 2 lbs and has grown 1 inch since his last check-up on June 10th.

Pretty soon Henry should start rolling over – which should be fun. Right now he’s doing really well at grabbing things and then pulling them into his mouth.  All things go into the mouth at this point – that’s Henry’s only way of finding out about things.  I went to change him last night and discovered that his whole left sock was soaked because he had found his foot and wanted to taste it.

Right now Henry is feeling the pain from his shots – he’s been fussy and inconsolable for a few hours, except when I put him in the bath.  But generally Henry is a lovely happy boy and he dearly loves his sister, who posed for me this morning in Henry’s crib:

Anna and Henry

Someday I hope they’ll be great friends!

A few weeks ago Anna’s cousin Brendan came over to play.  He came with a large pitcher and some freshly squeezed lemon juice in it; he had a plan to have a lemonade stand in front of our house.  Since I was a big lemonade stand girl myself, I happily added some water, honey and ice to the operation.  Then I made a sign that said, “Lemonade – 25 cents” for them and told Brendan to color in the letters.  Too bad I forgot that he’s still 4 and watched as he colored over the letters…

Lemonade!

I thought people would probably get the idea anyway, so I taped it to Anna’s art table and we moved the operation out to the end of our driveway.  Anna didn’t really get the whole “Lemonade Stand” idea, so she sat across from Brendan and drank a cup of lemonade – thereby giving Brendan his first quarter of the day…

Drinking the product...

Brendan, meanwhile, had gotten a new “Home on the Range” harmonica that day and played that through the whole stand set-up process.  After two cups of lemonade went to the kids (yay! 50 cents!) we managed to sell the rest.  One cup to a nice woman who stopped her car in the middle of the street and paid $2 for her cup, one cup to my sister, one cup to a kid who tried to drink his cup and ride his bike away at the same time, and a car with a mother and 4 teenage girls that were on their way home from school.  Everyone who bought a cup of lemonade was treated to a harmonica song from Brendan – free with purchase – what a deal!  All in all, a major success!

Two weeks ago we had a lovely playgroup with some friends from our original birthing class for Anna.  Our friend Angie brought her son Timothy and her new baby Kate over, and our other friend Brooke brought her two twins Morgan and Keira over.  After lots of playing with the water table, etc., we sat all the kids down for lunch (fruit and cheese pizza) at Anna’s little table.

Timothy, Anna, Keira and Morgan

They all had a great time and everyone had so much fun at Anna’s water table that now they each own one too – I should get a commission from Toys’R'Us!

For Anna’s birthday my parents sent some money for a new outside playhouse for Anna.  We couldn’t find the right one until just recently, and it came this week, and was set up for Anna on Thursday night.  Anna saw it from her playroom window Friday morning and demanded to go down and “play with that!”  She didn’t even know what it was, but Anna knew it was a new fun thing for her! It has a door, mail slot, working doorbell, two windows, a little sink, table with seats and a little phone.  Anna loves it and played with it all day Friday.

I took some video so that my parents could see what a hit their gift is with the little girl:

Anna even demanded to eat her lunch in the playhouse (she also commanded that I make pizza rolls):

Playhouse Lunch

All-in-all, Empress Anna has been having a great summer so far.  Oh, and thanks Nana and Grandpa for the playhouse – the little girl obviously loves it!

So here is the Empress’ update…

Anna is very verbal, very independent and very active.  She turned two on April 5th, and it was just too close to the birth of her baby brother for us to be capable of hosting a birthday party.  We waited a few weeks, called a few people and decided to have a little party at our house on the 17th of April.  But the universe had different plans for us.  A few days before the scheduled party we discovered that our beloved Cash had fleas, and that they were quite frequently jumping on us and in the carpet.  Exactly what I needed with a newborn in the house! So, we canceled the party at our house and began a huge clean up/flea killing campaign to rid us of this nasty pest.  The myth that there are no fleas in Colorado is a truly a myth!

Since we had already told Anna that she had a birthday coming up, we gathered a small group of family, met at a local restaurant and I made strawberry cupcakes with sprinkles for the birthday girl.

Anna's birthday

With the new baby in the house, Anna has learned that crying is a good tool for mommy manipulation.  She’s fond of grabbing my camera and playing with it, and if you try to take it away from her, you get this:

Anna crying

Most of the time she just gets fingerprints on my camera and aims the camera the wrong way.  And almost all of the pictures that she does take are fuzzy pictures of her fingers, but every once in a while she gets one that looks pretty good.

Anna's self portrait

This summer I have a full schedule for our active little girl, including a music/singing class on Mondays (a woman with a guitar sings and we sing and dance along), a pre-pre-school class for an hour on Wednesdays (parents do not attend!) and tumbling class on Saturdays.  In between all that we are going to try to fit in lots of visits with Anna’s friends.  We had a visit from Piper and Laura the other day and I got a shot of the little girls hanging out at Anna’s art table:

Anna and Piper

Anna’s climbing has reached new complications as she is often getting herself in situations I’d rather she not be in.  The other day I heard “Mama, come get me!” from her bedroom and rushed in to find her hanging on to the top of her bookcase, unable to figure out how to climb down.  Fortunately for me, when we moved the bookcase into her room I had had the foresight to have my dad and Mike anchor the bookcase to the wall.  I was Anna when I was little after all, I knew she was going to climb it eventually…

Yesterday, I came into the living room to find Anna opening the back door and saying, “I’m going outside, okay?”  The back door had been locked, but Anna had deftly moved one of her little chairs over to the door and unlocked both the handle lock and the dead bolt and let herself outside.

Last week I was listening to her usual morning singing routine that she does after she wakes up when all of a sudden there was screaming and crying.  Again, I rushed into her room to find that she had climbed up the side of her crib and gotten herself stuck trying to get out.  So, the decision was made to make the leap to a “big girl” bed.  We removed one side of her convertible crib, put up a gate on her bedroom door and spent last weekend dealing with the fall out.  Anna really enjoys her new independence, she frequently gets up out of the crib and plays with her books, stuffed animals, etc.  This is the destruction in her room after Sunday afternoon’s nap:

Anna's bedroom after a nap

Monday afternoon’s nap didn’t actually happen as Anna instead just played in her room.  Monday night we figured she would be tired and go to sleep pretty quickly. Ha! Instead, she played for 2 hours and then was up every time that we were up with Henry.  At midnight while I was feeding Henry, Mike went into Anna’s room to find her at the window with the shade up looking out and singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”.  Adorable, but all that wakefulness made for a grumpy girl the next day.

With her new baby brother in the picture Anna is often a little more grumpy anyway.  She does not like all the attention Henry gets and often tells me to put Henry down or stop feeding him so that I can play with her.  It’s a little heartbreaking since I would like to give her more attention, but it’s simply not possible.  She’s a little helpful with him; she likes to put his pacifier in to make him stop crying, but she’s also treating her dolls like I treat Henry.  She often changes the diaper on one of her dolls and the other day decided to pull up her shirt and “feed” her doll – once she even pulled up her shirt when I let her have Henry on her lap! I’m sure this will get better when I have to feed Henry less often, but for the moment, Anna is learning to deal with the fact that I simply can’t give her my full attention.

But Anna is adorable and smart and will always be my favorite little girl.  Every once in a while out of the blue Anna will say, “I love you mama” and there’s nothing you can do but love those moments!

I used to have spare moments during the day, a moment to prepare dinner, a moment to nap, a moment to blog, etc. and all that is gone – for the time being.  This is the first spare moment I have had in weeks – and I doubt it will last long.  Phone calls and emails go unanswered, thank you notes go unwritten and blog posts go undone.

I’m going to do separate posts for family updates, since there has been a lot that has gone on with each of us in the past few weeks.  I’ll post first about Henry when I have a moment.   I promise to include pictures… Updates coming soon, I promise!

12 days.  12 wonderful days – that’s how many consecutive days since the beginning of December I have not been sick.  Otherwise I have been battling a cold or stomach virus each week.  Apparently for this pregnancy my immune system completely shut down.  As I sit here with my trusty box of tissues with lotion and my Mentholatum, I can only hope that it will come back up after the baby is born.  During my 12 days of not being sick I was able to visit with friends and have my baby shower – so I should probably be grateful.  I sincerely wish that I was one of those wonderful people who never complains and is always perky, despite being sick, but unfortunately for Mike – I’m not.  I’ve been sick, grumpy and unable to sleep for the past few months and he’s been such a great husband throughout.

I’m at the point in the pregnancy where sleep is generally a problem anyway.  The baby is so large and heavy at this point that turning over is something that requires a forklift and a major pillow shift.  I sleep on one side for a little, until the bottom hip begins to hurt, and then I have to turn over, move the pillows that are under the baby belly and behind my back and start the whole process again.  I generally have to pee at least 4 times a night, and with this latest cold, I wake up to cough or sneeze fairly often.  This latest cold did bring some relief to Mike however – I lost my voice on Wednesday and didn’t really start to get it back until Saturday- so he has been spared some complaining…

I’m also at the point in the pregnancy where I go in to see my midwife every week.  Don’t worry – I’m not one of those “Do It Naturally At Home with a Midwife” kind of gals. My midwife is a certified Nurse Midwife, so when the time comes, I meet her at the hospital, she hangs around, but not annoyingly so, and then if something goes wrong there are nurses and doctors around to help.  It worked out great with her for Anna and I’m glad that I have her support again for this second pregnancy.  I can clearly remember a conversation I had with her last time that went like this, “Dorrie, the breathing isn’t working is it?”, “No, Jayne, it isn’t.” to which she replied, “Epidurals are our friends.”  Damn that was good advice!

At last week’s appointment the midwife did some checking and announced that I was making progress, but we weren’t going to have the baby this weekend.  This all has to do with the state of my cervix, the status of which I am going to spare the details of – it’s the internet after all.  I have lately been having lots of contractions and with the lack of sleep was pretty much hoping to go into her office and come out a few hours later with a baby.  There comes a point in my pregnancies where I get to a “I’m done with this crap” point and I am so there…

On the homefront I have been nesting a little.  The baby’s room is as decorated as I can get it right now – we’re doing a farm animals theme with red as our main color.  I got so nesty this past week I scrubbed a few baseboards, and even picked up all of the dog poop in the yard – although what contact the baby will have with the backyard is beyond me.

We’ve also been trying our best to prepare Anna for what is about to happen.  We talk a lot about the baby and how when the baby comes she will go her Aunt’s and Mama will go to the doctor.  If you ask her what babies do Anna says, “Cry”.  She visits the baby’s room a lot, mostly to find her old toys and say, “It’s mine!” and we have been reading her a book about being a big sister.  This will be a bumpy road for her coming up, but I’m hoping that all this prep will make it a little less of a shock.

Hormones willing my next post will be a post of pictures of my son and how the whole birth thing went down.  But if I get bored in the meantime, I’ll post some pictures of the cutie/soon-to-be big sister.

As always, let’s start with the cutie.  Currently, the cutie is sick and cranky.  Wednesday night Anna woke up crying 6 times, probably due to the fever of 102 that she had.  Thursday I took her to the doctor where they said her throat looked red and icky – a strep test came back negative but we are waiting for more detailed lab results.  They sent me home with an antibiotic prescription and instructions to keep her medicated with ibuprofen and Tylenol.  Due to her sore throat Anna is enjoying a diet of yogurt and other soft foods while we wait out whatever this is that she has acquired.

As it turns out, Anna is obsessed with Christmas lights – absolutely loves them! Requests for “Christmas lights” come from the back seat of my car every time we go anywhere – day or night.  So, last weekend we took her to Zoolights, which is the Denver Zoo all lit up with lights in the shapes of animals.  Since it’s night time there weren’t many animals to see, but the elephants and giraffes were inside and were the highlight of the trip.  We got a good picture of one of the few moments Anna would stand still while we were there:

Anna at Zoolights

Pretty soon all of the Christmas lights will be gone and Anna will be very disappointed.  It’s hard to explain to her about something that will happen “tomorrow”, let alone not for another 11 months.

Recently Anna found in my drawer some old mascara and cover up.  I think I was blissfully folding laundry in another room while she decided to do some make-uping of her own…

Anna's first make-up attempt

She knew that the things she had found went around your eyes, so she aimed there, and fortunately didn’t poke herself in the eye with mascara.  We’ll work on proper application tips later.

Anna was also recently introduced to lollipops when her cousin brought some over.  They were kind of huge and I got a great shot of Anna looking like a rocker with a microphone while she tried desperately to keep the whole thing in her mouth:

Lollipop girl

As for me, I’m pregnant, large, running around after a toddler and just generally exhausted.

Under the Big Top

If you only look briefly at this picture you might say – “Oh look, the circus came to town! Oh, no wait…”  Some jerk maternity clothes designer thought it would be HILARIOUS to design pajama pants for pregnant ladies that make you look and feel like you are the Big Top! Not only that, but they are flannel! Oh so sexy!  I have no idea where the top is for these pajama bottoms, having borrowed almost all of my maternity wardrobe from my sister, but I wouldn’t wear the top anyway, because then I would really feel like I needed some popcorn and cotton candy to complete the outfit.  Unfortunately, these are the only comfortable pajama pants I have right now.

I attempted to resolve this situation by heading to my local “Super” Target only to discover that the maternity section consists of 4.5 racks stocked with either fancy short dresses or camisoles.  Apparently Target thinks that pregnant women are either going to parties or laying around waiting for our breakfast in bed to be delivered… Screw you Target!

Anyway, the kid is kicking a lot and has earned himself the nickname “Pele”.  He seems to be healthy and growing well – although I have an ultrasound check in a few weeks to make sure his kidneys are okay due to a size difference in the two of them in the last ultrasound.

As for Mike, he returned yesterday from the “Big Beers Belgians and Barley Wines Festival” that he attended in Vail with his friend Nate.  Sadly, neither of them took any prizes home from the homebrewing competition, in which they both had beers entered, but it does seem like they had a good time anyway.

Mike is looking forward to having another “brew day” – the initial brewing of a beer takes an entire day – soon.  I got him a gift certificate to his favorite brewing supply store for Christmas and I’m sure he’ll come up with some new and fun recipe to delight all those around him who drink beer.

Mike is also getting over a nasty chest cold, that has been hanging around for several weeks now.  This hasn’t stopped him from going to hockey though and his weekly racquetball league starts up this Thursday.  Perhaps all that chasing after a ball will kick the chest cold out this week…  Wish him luck.

And that’s all the news that I can type while Anna is still waking up.  I’m off to bring her some milk and some antibiotics and start our day.  Take care everyone!

Here’s one I took of Anna recently that doesn’t show the out of focus bit too badly:

Anna trying on clothes

Anna is in a “let’s try on clothes” phase, so here she decided to put on a romper over the outfit she was already wearing.  She’s so cute she makes it look good…

We’ve stopped counting the words that Anna knows; once we reached 50 we just stopped – her vocabulary is huge.  She’s saying two words sentences a lot, like “Bye bye truck” and “More milk” and the other day there was “Teeth owie”.  It is lovely to have a little communicator!  Mike has trained Anna to raise her arms and say, “Me!” when he asks, “Who’s the cutest?” and I’ve been teaching her to say, “Excuse me” when she burps or farts.  This works some of the time, but mostly Anna farts or burps, smiles wide and then says, “Excuse me.”  I think Mike has been teaching her that as well!

Mike is working hard, both at work and at home.  He recently built a sieve for my compost and then modified it temporarily so that he could use it to clean the Trex sawdust out of our mulch.  The carpenter who built our deck, nice man though he was, left us with all of the clean up.  Which meant much hauling of scrap to the trash, one trip to a local dump, and a lot of sawdust cleaning…  Mike continues with hockey again this season and if anyone wants to go watch him play, he’s playing tonight at 10 p.m.  Anna and I will be asleep, but will be rooting him on in spirit anyway.

Here’s our big news though: I’m “in the family way”, but in a nauseous, “Pass the Saltines and ginger ale” kind of a way.  I hate that phrase, “in the family way”, as well as “knocked up” and “preggo”.  So, I think I’ll just go with saying, I’m pregnant! Anna’s brother or sister is due April 4th – which is one day before Anna’s 2 year birthday, so I’m hoping that this baby comes early too – I would hate to be in the hospital for Anna’s birthday!  We’re only at 12 weeks now so hold off on the “What is it?” questions, since we won’t know until 20 weeks.  I’m just beginning my second favorite portion of pregnancy (after the totally nauseous peeing constantly phase I’m in now); the “She just looks fat” phase – before it really starts to look like I’m pregnant and not just packing on the extra pie and ice cream.  Oh, ice cream! Damn that sounds good – I have to go get some now!

We went to Belleview Park twice in the past week. It’s pretty awesome; there’s a train, petting farm and a place to wade in a shallow stream.  Anna really liked the wading part:

Wading with Daddy

Of course the one time that Mike gets a decent picture of me, while we were all on the train, Anna wasn’t looking at the camera.  That is always how that works out!

Pretty Good

Sunday we went to visit Piper Joy and her proud parents.  Here is Nate with the recently fed and generally sleepy Piper:

Nate and Piper

While we visited with the new family, Anna hung out in Piper’s swing, which she is way too big for:

In Piper's Swing

This week Mike’s best friend Alex, his wife Dana and their daughter Nadia came to visit.  Dana got a good picture of the boys and their little girls while they watched Sesame Street:

Daddies' Girls

Alex discovered the joys of hanging out on our deck with his coffee:

Coffee on the deck

And Anna discovered one of Nadia’s bears, which was way too big for her:

Anna and the bear

Saturday morning Mike and Anna hung out the computer eating cereal, while Anna drew up plans for something:

At the computer

The highlight of the week has been Anna’s teething.  She has been “bonus fussy” (that’s what her doctor called it) – waking up several times a night, crying at the drop of a hat, not napping, not eating and just in general showing us that teething is no fun at all.  She’s tired, which is why I was able to get this lovely picture of her, which I plan on using to bribe her with when she’s 14…

Toasted

Not that we’re as cute as Anna, but I have do have updates on Mike and I anyway.

Mike has just returned yesterday from salmon fishing in Canada with my father and uncle.  My uncle has a home on Vancouver Island, British Columbia where he and my aunt stay during the summer.  Every year there is a salmon fishing tournament in the small town near where they live.  For years my father, grandfather and uncle have participated in the tournament and several years ago Mike and my brother-in-law were invited to join in the tradition.  Mike and my dad flew to Victoria on Friday and the tournament ran all weekend.  It apparently involves being out on the ocean by 6 a.m.!  I don’t think they caught too many salmon, but they did see whales (Orcas and Grays) and seem to have had a nice time.  I’m sure Mike will be posting some of the beautiful pictures he took on his website soon.

Mike has recently gotten into the website hosting/writing business.  He’s creating a website for our friend Angie, who teaches violin out of her home and is enjoying using new technologies to do so.  If you know anyone who needs a website hosted, please let him know!

Mike continues to play roller hockey Tuesday nights with his team, “The Mad Hatters”.  They have a pretty small team with few subs, so he comes home pretty tired, especially from those late 9 or 10 p.m. games.

Mike works for a small software company and with the recession they are seeing some hard times.  There were rumors of a competitor buying the company, but the deal fell through.  In order to balance the budget and make themselves profitable there have been some cutbacks.  Several people that we know and liked (it’s a small company of only about 40 employees) were laid off and salaries across the board have been reduced.  Since we’re living on one income this will mean some budget cutting on our part as well, but we’ll make it work somehow.

I have of course been concentrating on Anna and keeping her busy, happy and off the furniture.

I’m still going to my bookclub meetings once a month. We’re reading, “An Artist of the Floating World”, by Kazuo Ishiguro this month.  I’d tell you how it was but my sister has the only copy that the library owns, so I’m waiting for her to finish it before I can check it out.

I am also part of a fledgling effort to start a chapter of the League of Women Voters (LWV) to our county.  The LWV is a non-partisian group that originally sprung from the suffragist movement.  The purpose of the organization now is to encourage participation in goverment.  The LWV never endorses or opposes political candidates but does provide forums for candidate debate as well as issue debate.  My mother was heavily involved in the LWV when I was a child and so it seems only right that I should join in the movement to bring the LWV to the county in which I live.

Although I would love to be working from home, I haven’t had the time or opportunity to do so for several months.  There was a time when I did some work for Mike’s company, but there has been no work from them for several months.  It would be lovely to have the extra income as well as the mental challenge, but Anna keeps me busy enough.

Recently I have been trying to get better about leaving Anna, especially now that she’s getting bigger.  Twice now I have dropped her off at a local “drop-in” daycare place, where my sister often takes my nephew, for an hour at a time just to see how it goes.  And this week while Mike was gone Anna went to our friend’s Steve and Angie’s for a few hours while I got some things done.  It’s hard, Anna cries a lot, but I know that I need to do it for her sake as well as mine.

Otherwise, we’ve just been hanging out, watching Anna grow and change, watching Cash sleep (that’s certainly his favorite activity) and now enjoying our new deck.  Right now I’m dreaming of sitting on the deck with some wine in the evening and watching the humming birds buzz the feeder…

As usual, let’s start with the cutie:

Anna will be 16 months on Wednesday.  She’s buzzing around really well with this new walking thing and is scraping up her knees far less than she did a few weeks ago.  I’ve enrolled her in “Tumble Tots” classes at our rec center every Wednesday, which is just what she needs.  It’s basically a padded room where the kids can play, jump on a trampoline, even go on a balance beam.  She loves it and there are plenty of other kids in the class to play with, including three sets of girl twins. Although I did catch her trying to do a somersault like we do in class off of the ottoman the other day!

Anna talks a lot and understands us quite well, but she chooses not to obey a good portion of the time as well; typical toddler!  Favorite phrases include: “walk park” as in, “we’re walking to the park now mama!”, and “more cheese”.  Oh, and “No!” – that’s certainly my favorite as well!

A few weeks ago we took Anna to the small airport not too far away where there is a restaurant that looks out onto the runways.  She did this for all of lunch:

Airplane Viewing

We went to a park nearby a few weekends ago for the neighborhood picnic.  Anna loves to go through the tunnels, but it’s even better when Daddy chases her:

In the tunnel

Oh and can I just say, this outfit that Anna is wearing, was made by my mom for me when I was Anna’s age.  How cool is it that Anna looks good in the 1974 outfit?

70's style

Last week we went to a nearby farming museum where we got to see lots of farm animals.  Like these dirty, smelly sheep:

Smelly Sheep

Granted, the museum was free (whohoo!) and Anna and her friend David had a good time:

Sheep Staring

That is, until David and Anna were sitting on a bench and David tried to kiss Anna.  She was a good girl and took off:

I'm outta here!

Gosh I hope she does that until she’s 21!

Yesterday I took Anna and Cash to the fenced in baseball field at the high school near us so Cash could get a run.  Instead, he just stood and Anna ran around:

Anna runs, Cash stands

After a while I just put the leash back on Cash.  Anna is learning the word “Come”, so she tried to get him to go with her, with little success:

Come Cash

Now that the deck is done I got out the baby pool and let Anna splash around in it for a while.  I didn’t put her in her swimming suit because Anna has no fat and gets cold easily, so I just let her go in the pool in what she was wearing.  She really loved playing in the pool, but in this picture she seems to be making a drink order to the pool boy:

Pina colada please!