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It’s another beautiful, spring day here in February! The weather has been fantastic lately, which is weird but it’s nice to get out of the house in the middle of winter too.

We had a very busy week! Chris got Tuesday and Friday off to make up for his very long shift last Saturday. Since I was scheduled to be snack mom at school on Tuesday, this was an extra bonus for CareBear. She loved introducing him to the new teacher and showing off for Papa’s visit. We brought bananas and blueberry muffins since CareBear insisted that was what Teacher Nancy wanted. We also made a special trip after school to get birthday party invitations to pass out to her class this week. CareBear had a very good day.

Wednesday was ultrasound day. Banjo is doing well and getting big. We’ve got about another month before we meet him/her which seems like both a very short time and a very long time. I think my abdominal muscles are starting to give up on me. Chris and I were able to go out to lunch on the Tacoma waterfront to celebrate our off year anniversary. The view was lovely, especially with the sunny day.

LiliBee is getting the hang of potty training! It’s more practice than practical at this point, but I think she’s starting to make the connection. We’re keeping it very casual, though, since I expect the transition to “middle child” in a few weeks might set us back a bit. On the other hand, she’s finally growing out of her 18 month clothes! Maybe people will start believing me that she’s two years old pretty soon.

We actually stayed home for most of the nice weekend. Chris and the girls spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the front yard (ok, they mostly watched and critiqued what he was doing) while I took advantage of the extra child supervision to be a little lazy and work on online stuff for the preschool. It was a mellow weekend but, looking back, it was also surprisingly productive!

This week we’re back to normal… and only one dr appointment! After seeing doctors on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday last week, only going once seems almost like a vacation. Of course, we have birthday party planning and flier distribution for the preschool to fit in, but I’m looking forward to a slower week

Not much to report from this last week, mostly just the regular schedule of school and playing and doctor visits! Of course, our weekend was a slightly different story.

Chris worked on Saturday since he had things to do that required taking the computer system down and his coworkers appreciate him doing that while they’re not there. (He gets to take Tuesday off instead, which is a nice trade considering the holiday weekend.) Things didn’t quite go as smoothly as he hoped and he ended up working for 22 hours straight! He finally made it home around 6am on Sunday, poor guy… he hadn’t eaten since lunch on Saturday and had been up for more than 24 hours!

Unfortunately, I was then injured in a freak Valentine’s Day accident (LiliBee poked me in the eye with a surprisingly sharp candy wrapper) and had to spend the whole morning in the ER. I have a corneal abrasion, which will heal quickly but is remarkably painful and interferes with my ability to do things like drive and read. Chris finally got to have some food and sleep Sunday afternoon.

Other than the ER trip, Valentine’s day was pretty fun around here. I got a surprise card from CareBear and some technology thing that will be handy once I figure it out from LiliBee and Chris. The girls and I painted the patio door for Chris’ valentine… they had a great time making a big mess and a “masterpiece”. He was very impressed, of course. The kids also got some candy and super exciting Hello Kitty fans from Grams and Pas. All in all, CareBear thinks Valentine’s Day is great and LiliBee is happy to go along with that.

This week is going to be a busy one. I’m “snack mom” at school tomorrow and have my monthly ultrasound on Wednesday. Thursday we’re(hopefully) going to be training Grams and Pas in the drop off/pick up routine at school so CareBear won’t miss much time while I’m out of commission in March and April. Friday is my weekly OB visit. I also have several things I need to get done in my “job” as publicity person for the preschool (if you know anyone looking for a preschool, we’ll be holding an open house on March 3rd!). And this week is Chris and my anniversary-of-sorts… it’s when we met so we use it as our anniversary on the years when there’s no Leap Day!

Greetings from another warm-ish, sunny day! Apparently, we’ve decided to swap February for April this year and it’s just weird. I’m not used to the beginning of February being “jackets optional”.

We had a fun, fairly mellow week this week. LiliBee tried to catch a cold early in the week, but it seems to have fizzled out and hasn’t spread to the rest of us so we’re lucky so far this month.

I went to school with CareBear to be the “art mom” for the day. It’s one of my favorite jobs since you basically get to play with the kids the whole class without having to leave to make food or lift heavy things. Of course, they decided that painting under the table would be a good activity for the day… I’m a little too pregnant to be able to tape paper to the underside of a preschool table gracefully! I needed a little down time in the afternoon to recover from that. Fortunately, the kids occupied themselves for awhile eating butter. (Ick!)

Our weekend was mostly used for errands and we started planning for the various things that need to take place before the end of March (when I’m out of commission for a few weeks). Chris and the girls spent some time outside, cleaning up the yard and making war on moles. Meanwhile, I tried to come up with free ways to advertise our preschool (my job as “publicity committee”)… if anyone has ideas for that or good places to post fliers, let me know.

Of course, the best part of the weekend was when Chris and the girls held “movie night” without me and let me take a nap!

Another of our “quieter” weeks this week. I don’t think we have anything out of the ordinary going on but I’m sure we’ll manage to keep busy. I hope all of our east coast friends are staying warm!

Happy February! We’re a whole month into the New Year and I’m still not sure where 2009 went!

We had a great time this week. Our field trip to the Hands On Children’s Museum in Olympia was a lot of fun. CareBear and LiliBee were a little overwhelmed by all of the kids and stuff at first (CareBear more than LiliBee, my poor little drama queen) but we soon figured out how things worked. CareBear loved the tree house, the boat and the light house especially… she’s always happy when she can climb something! LiliBee was more interested in the “trucks” that she could drive. They both agreed that the play dough area and the peg wall were good for two or three visits each. It was sad to say goodbye to our teacher, but I’m sure that the new one will be just as much fun. As an added bonus, we were able to go have lunch with Chris after the field trip. It’s always a big adventure to go see Papa at work!

We also went to a birthday party over the weekend. One of CareBear’s preschool friends had a “pajama party” complete with pillow cases to decorate, bed bug games and cupcakes with little candy pajamas on them. CareBear talked the kids into playing hide and seek for awhile before it deteriorated into a chaotic game of tag or chase… I’m not entirely sure. They had a great and noisy time. LiliBee wasn’t quite old enough to understand everything that the “big” kids were doing, but she had a lot of fun just running around after them.

My first nonstress test was uneventful… other than having to sit there strapped to a machine for about 45 minutes before they got the readings that they wanted. Banjo is cooking right along with no signs of stress. And I get to do that every week for the next 7 weeks or so. Fun.

In other news, our front yard is back together after last week’s trauma! Chris put in our new mailbox and several new fence sections so it’s almost like it never happened… other than part of the fence being new and shiny compared to the older sections and the lavender trying to recover from being run over! Still, it looks very nice I think.

I’ll be going to school Thursday to be the art mom, but otherwise I think we have a fairly normal week! (Ok, I’m not entirely sure what counts as “normal” anymore, we seem to alternate between “really busy” and “sort of busy” these days!)

We had a pretty exciting week around here…

I had my 30 week ultrasound and Banjo continues to be very cooperative and consistent. Everything is measuring right on for dates and looking just like it should. And we got an extra bonus when they offered to do a 3d picture for us! It was fun to see Banjo’s face and see that he or she looks quite a bit like the girls did when they were born.

I was “snack mom” at preschool, which is always exciting since that means that CareBear gets to be the special teacher’s helper for the day. She’d decided weeks ago that we’d be taking strawberry muffins and they turned out to be very tasty and popular. We got the sad news, though, that our teacher will be leaving us for greener pastures in Seattle so we’ll have to break in a whole new teacher next month (well, not “new” since she taught there years ago, but new to us!).

Our biggest excitement, though, happened over the weekend. Early Sunday morning, someone missed the turn at the end of our road and drove into our yard! They destroyed part of our fence and flattened our mailbox. They also made it way too far into the yard to have been traveling at a sane speed… they jumped the curb and the tire tracks stop just short of our very large camellia. After that, they apparently backed around onto our neighbors rock wall, taking it down a couple of feet, before speeding off back down the road. We filed a police report for the hit and run, though it’s unlikely that they’ll find them. They did leave behind a section of their front bumper and at least one headlight so we have a good idea of what kind and color of car it was! I’m very happy that our yard is well planted and slopes upward so they had no chance of actually running into the house.

This week will be busy! We have a fun preschool field trip to the Children’s Museum in Olympia, I’ll be having my first non-stress test with Banjo, and CareBear has a birthday party this weekend! All fun stuff.

Well, I didn’t get this out yesterday as planned but I blame the holiday! Since Chris had the day off, I didn’t get to any of my usual Monday stuff (not that I mind, it’s more fun having him around).

We had a pretty fun week… some visiting, a little belated Christmas gifting, no doctor’s appointments and even a little downtime! I had a fun lunch with an old friend whom I haven’t seen in ages! It was great to find out what was going on with her and her family. And it was really nice to have Chris take the kids with him so I could have a leisurely meal and chat for as long as I wanted! We also hosted a playdate with Z and Tez. The girls seemed to enjoy running from one end of the house to the other, repeatedly. They did a lot of playing and snacking and the grown-ups got to chat so a successful visit all around!

We spent the long weekend running a few errands, playing outside (when it wasn’t too rainy) and generally just hanging around. We decided to have a relaxing weekend before things get too busy again! We’ll be going for my monthly ultrasound this week so I’m looking forward to seeing Banjo, as usual. I’ll be seeing one doctor or another every week from now on (I’m 30 weeks along and everything’s fine, but they have rules about being old and diabetic), until the end of March when the Banjo makes an appearance. I also get to be “snack mom” at preschool this week, which is always fun. CareBear has decided that she wants to bring strawberry muffins so I’ll have to find a good recipe. Meanwhile, LiliBee is going to get a lot of good Grams and Pas time so it’s a good week for everyone!

We had a good week… no new viruses or infections or strange rashes showed up! The kids are totally back to normal and Chris was only sick for about a day and a half. I’m still recovering, though, for some reason (and I think that reason may be named “Banjo”). Still, a good week.

CareBear started back at school, which is always exciting. They had their first substitute teacher and CareBear celebrated that by running full speed into one of the other kids. She got quite a good bump on the head from that, but his head must be tougher since he didn’t seem any worse for wear.

We had a quick visit with one of my good friends, who came bearing gifts of hand-me-down clothes, movies, toys and books! It’s just like Christmas all over again over here! We’ve watched some “CareBear” movie practically every day since then and CareBear already knows a lot of the lines and songs.

I had my last “regular” OB visit last week. Next time around (in about 3 weeks), I’ll start my weekly “non-stress tests” in addition to the monthly ultrasounds. Being an old, diabetic, pregnant lady gets complicated! Anyway, Banjo is still doing well and the girls are really into hearing the heartbeat.

LiliBee is fascinated by the whole baby thing. She is constantly pulling my shirt up to check on the baby and talk or sing to it. It’s really very cute, except when we’re out and about and I don’t necessarily want to flash everyone… she doesn’t really care how far up she pulls my shirt! (CareBear is at least a little more discreet when she starts sticking her head under my shirt to check on the baby.) LiliBee’s favorite book right now is about a little hippo who learns how to help out when his parents bring home a baby. I hope it’s a good sign for March!

This week is shaping up to have lots of fun visiting! I’m also hopeful that I’ll finally get everything cleaned up from the holiday… getting sick really messed up my house!

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a good holiday season and are rested and ready for 2010.

We had a nice, relaxing week after all of the hustle and bustle of Christmas. Unfortunately, it was also an unhealthy week…

LiliBee came down with a fever and congestion on Wednesday night and was sick through the New Year. She’s recovered nicely now, but still has an occasional cough. CareBear waited a couple of days before getting the fever… but on the 1st of the year, she finally succumbed. She was really only feverish for a day, which was nice, but now she has a rash from head to toe from her amoxicillin! They assure me that it will soon start looking better, which is good because she looks very spotty.

I was able to hold out until yesterday before getting the fever part of this illness, but I’ve had congestion for several days. I look forward to being able to breathe again. And sleep again. Chris has been lucky so far, but I have a feeling it’s only a matter of time before he comes down with whatever virus this is, too.

So we spent New Year’s Eve and every day since then holed up in the house trying not to infect anyone!

New Year’s Eve itself was very noisy around here. Our neighborhood started in with the fireworks around 6pm and then the booming was pretty constant between 10pm and 1am. Around midnight, they added car horns. Poor Lucy was beside herself (loud noises terrify her) and Maisy kept trying to yell at everyone. The kids slept through it all… don’t know if it was illness or if they just sleep that soundly!

Before all of the fevers, we managed to have some fun! The girls and I busied ourselves with new craft projects (Christmas gifts from Auntie Trina) and put on a couple of puppet shows. On Wednesday, Chris and I took CareBear on an outing to see “The Princess and the Frog” in the movie theater, complete with popcorn. She even dressed up for it. The movie was a big hit and she’s already asking when she can watch it again at home. Meanwhile, LiliBee spent a fun afternoon with Grams and Pas… I think she likes it when she has them all to herself!

We’ll be spending the next few days recovering, but I think everyone is on the way to health! I hope so, anyway, since we have to get back to real life this week.

(**note: no picture as of yet since I’m having trouble getting them to upload… I know they’re here somewhere…)

Well, we made it through the week of Christmas… it was lots of fun, but I can’t say that I’m not ready to have a nice, calm week!

We had a great time with all of our various holiday activities. I spent much of last week cooking and baking in preparation for the fun family gatherings. Chris and the girls did a great job helping with the cookies and amusing each other while I wrapped presents. CareBear and LiliBee “wrapped” some of their toys up for each other and for Banjo. It was very sweet. We even managed to pick up a few surprises for Chris, which isn’t easy.

CareBear was very excited about Santa this year and directed us to leave cookies and milk on the fireplace for him. She and LiliBee went to bed very nicely on Christmas Eve since they knew that was one of the “rules”… makes me wish it could be Christmas Eve more often! We had a very nice Christmas morning that began with CareBear running through the house yelling “wake up, sleepy heads!”… but at least she remembered that she had to wait until it was light out first. The girls made short work of their presents and enjoyed checking out their new stuff.

We had my family over for brunch on Christmas. I made some tasty food, if I do say so myself. LiliBee discovered that she is a big fan of ham and CareBear ate mostly fruit. As usual. CareBear received her first pair of roller skates from my folks and wasted no time in trying them out. She’s getting the hang of it and, surprisingly, isn’t getting too frustrated. LiliBee was a little put out that she can’t skate too, but she has more than enough to distract her in the meantime. It’s so fun to see them excited about every little thing.

We also headed down to Olympia for Chris’ family Christmas. Cousin H told us all about her Christmas and the girls got even more fun new stuff to play with. We had a great visit with the extended family (it’s always nice to know we’ll see them at least once a year). I was getting pretty tired from the long week by then, but the kids had no problem keeping up with the holiday festivities! They ran around with the cousins playing hide and seek and everyone got along for pretty much the entire visit.

In non-holday news, we had another ultrasound last week. Banjo is still measuring right on for dates and looking good! I guess we’ll be starting our non-stress tests in about a month, but otherwise all is well.

CareBear decided that the day after Christmas would be a great time to get her first urinary tract infection. It was a lot of fun convincing her that we had to collect a sample for the doctor, especially since it was so uncomfortable for her, but at least her medicine is pink. She told the pharmacist that pink was her favorite color so it must be good medicine. She’s feeling much better after a couple of days of antibiotics!

This week is going to be mellow. We have no school, no farm pick-up, no appointments, no obligations. Chris is only going in to work a couple of days (between his monthly work-from-home day and the holiday, it works out nicely!) and I’m hoping to get Lilia back on a more regular nap schedule. I certainly could use the rest!

Happy New Year!

We had a interesting week… it started with flour all over the house and ended with me trying to maim myself in the kitchen! In between, there was some fun stuff, though.

But first, flour-gate 2009… I was negligent and forgot to put the flour away last monday afternoon. While I was putting Lilia down for her nap, CareBear took the opportunity to add flour to her graham cracker snack. And to the counter. And the cupboards, the floor, the frig, the dining room, the living room, the couch, the stairs and the bonus room! It was very impressive. It’s amazing how far a couple of pounds of flour can go and she managed to go through it all! She’s usually so well behaved during nap time…

Most of our week was spent getting ready for Christmas. We finished up our shopping and got all of the stuff I need to make food for our various functions. I think (hope) that we won’t have to venture out much this week and can avoid all of the holiday shopping frenzy!

CareBear is on winter break for the next two weeks and classes at the Y don’t start up again until the end of January… I don’t know what we’re going to do with all the extra time!

I got older this week. My folks treated me to a very nice dinner Friday evening for my birthday… I even got cake! That wouldn’t usually be a big deal, but I’m supposed to be avoiding sugar due to the gestational diabetes so it was a very nice treat. And now I’m back to trying to be super careful (until later this week when I indulge a bit for Christmas… the doctor says it’s ok, honest!).

My birthday celebration continued over the weekend when Chris and the girls treated me to breakfast in bed. CareBear got a big kick out of the whole idea and LiliBee loved being a “runner” for Chris and bringing me water and utensils. Later, Chris took me out for nice dinner date while the kids went to a pizza/craft/music party at the Y. Overall, a great birthday weekend!

This week will be busy busy busy! We have several family gatherings over the holiday weekend and yet another ultrasound. Plus, I’ve got baking to do (LiliBee will be thrilled, she loves it when I’m in the kitchen) and presents to wrap! It’s a fun time, but I think I’ll be happy to wind down next week, too.

I hope everyone has a great holiday and that our friends over on the East coast are staying warm!