He speaks!

In what felt like overnight, Alex went from speaking garbled baby-talk with only a few mumbled semi-coherent words mixed in,  to speaking in near complete sentences.  In fact, he is almost speaking English fluently.  I am enjoying this language explosion immensely.  I've decided that nothing is cuter than a toddler trying to make a whole sentence.

"Cars is fun fast"
"want great toy" (as opposed to the million not-great toys he has)
"Caden fall over ok" (Caden fell over, but he's ok)
"Aggetti yum yum food yes" (I like spaghetti)
"Side down poopie ouch poopie" (I went down the slide, then pooped, the poop hurts my bum, please change me)

Ok, well, maybe I'm still the only one who can understand him, but it's getting better!

Did I say I was only half as sick as last time?  HA!  I'm at least as sick or worse than I was with Alex's pregnancy.  I'm certainly more wimpy about it this time around.  I think what's making it so hard on me is that it's only been two weeks, I probably have another four months of feeling like shit to go.  That's a long time!

I suppose the good news is that I'm too busy feeling crappy to worry at all about the possibility of miscarrying the pregnancy.  And, for me, I'd still take throwing up over worrying any day. 

Gratuitous photo montage

The pregnancy hormones made me do it.  It's embarassingly sappy.  I don't care.

Alex's first year:

Helpless

Several members of my family in California were forced to evacuate their homes due to the out of control wildfires.  Among the relatives evacuated were my uncle, who's home in Rice Canyon he spent the better part of 30 years building himself, and my grandmother who's in her 80's.  Her whole life was in her home. 

Obviously, the most important thing, for which we are all grateful, is that they all escaped injury and are safe, staying with other relatives in the area.  Word from the grapevine is that Grandma's home is gone, her entire mobile home park incinerated by the fire. (This is a picture of a home from her mobile home park during the fire).  No word yet on my uncle's house.

My first instinct is to throw Alex in the car and drive down to be with my family, to help in any way I can.  Help dig through rubble to find anything that can be salvaged.  However, better judgment kicks in when I realize that a freshly burned trailer park is no place for a two year old to run around, and I wouldn't be of much help if I'm chasing Alex.  Not to mention I'm in no condition to be lifting heavy objects or inhaling smoke and ash being pregnant.  Even just being there for moral support isn't realistic due to there being nowhere for me to stay.  Hotels are full of evacuee's and my relatives in the area's guest rooms and sofas are occupied with my evacuated relatives and possibly their own friends and families who may have had to flee.  So I'm left here to worry and wait for any news and feel utterly helpless to help my loved ones.

I naively thought that not working during this pregnancy would make dealing with the first (and very likely second) trimester nausea a breeze.  In some ways it is easier.  I'm not having to throw up in a zip lock bag in my car during rush hour traffic.  I don't have to puke in a public toilet or in the trash can at my desk.  What I didn't really consider is that being home with a toddler who still poops in his pants isn't making the nausea any easier to bear. 

It's not just wiping poop out of the creases of Alex's scrotum that is making me sick, even just changing a wet diaper makes me gag.  The smell of macaroni and cheese (Alex's lunch of choice) makes me dry heave.  Rocking Alex to sleep for his nap gives me motion sickness. It's also the fact that he thinks I'm a human jungle gym.  Having 25 pounds of solid toddler jump on me when I'm not sick is actually quite enjoyable, but when my stomach is queasy and my boobs are swollen and sore, it's not a picnic.   

There's also the guilt of not having the energy to play with Alex all day.  I'm days behind in laundry. I've stopped cooking and my family is living on fast food.  For the last three days I've let Alex run around the house in his jammies all day until I change him into clean jammies at night which doesn't really matter since he hasn't had a bath since last week.

Don't get me wrong though, it's not that bad.  I'm really only half as sick as I was with Alex, which is a relief.  And I'd rather be sick and feel like the pregnancy is going well than feel fine and wonder the whole time if I'm still pregnant.  And I don't for one second take for granted how lucky I am to be able to be home with Alex, to be pregnant with a new baby and have a husband who comes home after a long day of work with a sack of hamburgers and a kiss for his wife who hasn't showered in a couple of days.  Life is good.

Now these are missionaries I'd happily invite in for a talk

Why didn't anyone give me this for my birthday? 

Good news and bad news

Well, it's begun.  I'm five and a half weeks pregnant and "morning sickness" has started to kick in.  Up until today, I've been feeling perfectly fine, just some minor pregnancy symptoms like being tired, sore boobs and a real sensitive sense of smell.  Today however, I'm having a hard time getting off the couch, I'm more tired than ever and nauseous.  Thank goodness for Go, Diego Go!  Alex is happy as a clam laying on the floor watching TV while I'm trying to decide how many episodes we can watch before it's officially worse to watch Diego than get off my butt and start cleaning the house.

The good news is being sick is a pretty good sign that the pregnancy is going well.  The bad news is, I'm still sick.

Alex and I just got out of the shower and were in the bathroom.  I'm blowdrying my hair while he's busying himself arranging the stuff on top of the toilet (extra toilet paper, wet wipes, his lotion and soap).  I finish my hair and look at him and he's all shiny.  His hair is wet again and sticking straight up and his face, belly, hands and arms are covered in some sort of clear goo.  I take a closer look at what he was playing with to find he's covered himself in soap. 

Since Alex has eczema, he has to use Cetaphil soap and lotion, both of which come in pump bottles.  After a bath or a shower, I always rub him down with a liberal amount of lotion to keep his skin from getting too dry.  The lotion and soap bottles look identical except one is green (lotion) and one is blue (soap).

Since we were in a hurry this morning, I didn't lotion him up after his shower, so he took it upon himself to take care of it while I was busy doing my hair.  The bad news is he'd mistaken the soap for the lotion.  The good news, he's really, really clean.

Best Shot Monday

I just got a new lens for my birthday, a 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro.  I'm trying to learn how to use it and took the opportunity to test it out on my sleeping son.

Country livin'

Alex and I were on our morning walk, and up ahead we saw a man trying to walk what, from a distance, appeared to be a large black dog.  He was having a time of it, the "dog" was scared of everythng from passing cars to dead leaves blowing by.  As they got closer, I realized that it wasn't a dog, but a baby bull.  Having never seen anyone taking a bull out for a morning stroll on a leash before, I had to take a picture.

Fertile Myrtle

What did you do this weekend?  I didn't do much, just took a little test:

Looks like I passed :)

We're thrilled.  I only just went off birth control mid August, so it happened quicker than expected.  John for his part has spent the weekend with his chest puffed out grunting "Me big strong man.  Me put baby in woman's belly" all the while pounding his chest. Ok not really, but he's quite proud of the fact that he so quickly and easily impregnated me with his fertile seed.  To hear him tell the tale, he knocked me up from across the room just by thinking about it.

Of course, we've been down this road before.  Twice to be exact.  Only once reaching the finish line with a healthy baby.  So our excitement is tempered by the reality that it's still very early in this pregnancy and we know all too well what could happen in the coming months.  That said, however, I've decided to be nothing but positive about this pregnancy, as I have no real good reason to believe that I won't end up the proud mother of a brand new son or daughter come June 2008. 

One of those days when it's just not worth changing out of my jammies

Last night, John gathered up a groggy Alex off my lap to take him upstairs to bed when Mount Vesuvius erupted out of Alex's belly covering John in a thick layer of Alex's dinner.  I took Alex up to soak him in the tub and left John dry-heaving over the sink in the basement.  Once Alex and John were cleaned up, and I had scrubbed the last bit of the regurgitated french fries and chicken nuggets out of the carpet, I threw their soiled clothes along with a soggy Diego Blankie in the wash.

We snuggled Alex into bed with us, even though prior to and even after the vomit-fest he didn't act sick at all.  He fell asleep easily and about an hour or so later, I carried him into his own room and settled him into his bed with a replacement blankie.  His former favorite pre-Diego rocket ship blankie.

5:00 AM, I heard Alex get out of bed and run into the family room.  I got out of bed and went after him to find him sobbing about his "car cake".  Car Cake is what he's calling the Cars (the movie) birthday candle he demanded I buy for him yesterday at the store.  He immediately broke it in two and carried both pieces around all day.  He'd left it somewhere downstairs the night before the puking incedent.  I told him it was too late to go find Car Cake and we had to go back to bed.  I took him to bed and he proceeded to scream bloody murder about Car Cake being gone and broken.  Sob sob, scream, scream "Car cake broken! Car cake gone!"  repeat.  The Car Cake scream-a-Thorn soon included hysterical cries for Diego Blankie, which was sitting wet in the washer downstairs.   He soon got very dramatic about it, saying things like "Diego Blankie Died!  Diego Blankie all gone!  Diego Blankie Broken!  Diego Blankie Boo Boo!"  This went on for who knows how long before  I decided to go hunt down Bunny, another old favorite from the pre-Diego days.  Bunny seemed to do the trick and Alex finally fell asleep.

When we woke up this morning, it was Grump-fest 2007.  We immediately went downstairs to find Car Cake and transferred Diego Blankie to the drier.  Once Diego Blankie was warm and dry, and Alex wrapped himself up in it like a burrito while watching Go Diego Go, I figured we could finally start our day.  I was wrong.  Nothing made him happy, he refused to wear clothes, although he insisted on wearing a Cars Pull-up over his regular diaper.  I broke out the play dough and made balls for him out of the hot pink dough, which he'd immediately squish and scream at me that "Baseball broken!  Touchdown broken!"  and demand I reshape them, then immediately squish them again followed by more whining.  I made his favorite meal for lunch.  Spaghetti and Parmesan cheese.  He ate it all, then complained that his hands were messy, then complained that his Cars pull up was dirty.  I took the Pull up off and fell to the floor in despair. 

It's only noon and I have little hope it will get better.  He just came over pointing to a spot on his knee crying "Boo Boo GONE!" having discovered that his skinned knee has healed.  It's going to be a very long day.

Best Shot Monday

This was one of my favorites from the other day when I was trying to take a portrait of Alex.