Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Mary Charlotte!

Today you turn TWO! It's hard to believe that THIS was you 2 years ago.

And THIS is you now! You've grown so much in such a short time. We can hardly call you our baby any more. You run, jump, climb, throw awesome tantrums, color, paint, make designs with play doh, make towers out of blocks, sing the whole alphabet and at least half a dozen other songs, count to 11, speak in (some) complete sentences, and much more! Even if you didn't do all of those things, we'd still love you very much!

Just a Peek

We're in San Antonio, staying at the beautiful Hyatt Hill Country Resort. Yesterday, we hit up Sea World. Today we hung out in the pools and lazy river and played in the sand. Charlotte is loving it all and so are we.


Tomorrow begins the Fullness of Truth Conference that prompted this trip in the first place. However, after such a wonderful day of relaxing, I'm beginning to think about only attending the morning sessions of the conference, you know, because Charlotte is really loving the sand and water, and I'd hate to have her not get her fill! It was funny this evening though, because we could tell the catholic families were rolling in - "Gabriel, come over here." "Mary Catherine, look this way; Cecilia, smile for the camera!" Ha ha!

More photos and fun when we get back to Houston (so sometime after Sunday evening).

Our Little Piggy Bank

So today Charlotte swallowed a coin, at least based on the evidence. I'm totally torn between finding the situation hilarious and horrifying.

I was packing my toiletries bag in the bathroom while Charlotte played chased Maddie with my sarong just out of sight in the bedroom. Then I heard her kind of gagging, so I stepped out in a slight panic. Her eyes big, she had her finger in her mouth and was crying a little. I asked her what was wrong, but she just kept shoving her fingers to the back of her mouth. Finally I coaxed out of her, "coin, coin" followed by more whiny-crying.

"Charlotte, did you swallow a coin?"

Her emphatic response was, "Coin, coin!" and more shoving of her fingers into the back of her mouth as she tried to retrieve the coin. Followed by, "Where go?"

This went on for a while as I reminded her that we DO NOT put coins in our mouth. Then I told her she isn't a piggy bank. She mostly seemed pretty upset that I couldn't get the coin back! That definitely had me tickled.

Of course the mom in me rushed to the telephone to catch the pediatrician before she left the office at 5 (giving me 10 minutes, I hoped, to catch her!) . She's out this week, apparently, but the other pedi at her office was very helpful. He said that a quarter would be bothering her somewhere on the way down and she probably wouldn't be running around happily (as she was by this point). He said to take her to the emergency room tonight if she started acting like something was wrong, and gave us the all clear to travel to Sea World tomorrow as planned.

The bad news? We have to FIND this coin on it's way out or get an x-ray to make sure it's actually passed.

Good times at Sea World, oh yeah.

The part where she put something into her mouth that she shouldn't have AND swallowed it while she was out of my sight totally freaks me out. Thank God it wasn't a quarter that she probably would have choked on. What else is hiding under the couch or somewhere she can reach that I haven't noticed that she could choke on? What if she'd been in the other room where I couldn't hear her as well? Right now I can easily check on her whenever need be, but what will I do when I have a fussy newborn to tend to? I think we're going to have to add a prayer to her Guardian Angel every night!

To Bradley or not to Bradley?

So, I've been debating this with myself for a while. Well, Fred's been included in the conversations, or at least present when I debate these things out loud with myself. A refresh of Charlotte's labor and delivery for background:

For Charlotte's birth, I did a fair amount of reading about the Bradley Method and figured that as long as everything went smoothly (meaning quickly!) I would try to go without pain medication. I noticed regular contractions after a long, busy day, beginning around 11 pm. After laboring for 13 hours with wacky double-peaking type contractions (one contraction on top of another with 3-4 minutes in between) that didn't get me past 3 (or was it 4?) cm, the Dr. wanted to break my water and start pitocin. I said, "sure, but give me an epidural, because I want some rest!"

At that point, I was falling asleep between contractions. The epidural allowed me to sleep, so I was happy, but MC didn't react fabulously to the Pit, so it took a while for them to get the amount just right. They turned off the epidural as I readied to push. By the time I delivered MC an hour and a half later (at 10:02) it had worn off at least some (yes, ouch!), but I'm not sure how much. By the time I made it to my postpartum room, I was up on my feet, walking around, and thrilled with my beautiful baby girl. I wasn't dissapointed with how things had turned out at all.

But now, looking forward, I know I want this labor to be different. I want to labor longer at home (how would I have known that one contraction on top of another in any circumstance might not mean things were moving quickly?), if possible, and look for ways to progress faster on my own so I won't be encouraged to have my water broken or go on pitocin. I think that getting to the hospital once I'm farther along will help avoid additional intervention. The epidural, however, I have no problems with doing again. The question is how to do it?

Do we take the (somewhat) pricy, 12 week (24 hr) Bradley Method class, which encourages entirely un-medicated childbirth? Would I be made to feel like the decision for a likely epidural would be wrong? Would the class be worth it? Especially since the birth experience I had with Charlotte wasn't bad, just long with more interventions than ideal? Part of my hope is that the class will teach Fred to be a better "coach" and not a slave to every one of my rational or irrational desires.

Or should we simply invest in a doula to be our advocate and help with the coaching? Does a doula automatically have something against epidurals? (I don't, but considering mine wasn't at full force at the end maybe it doesn't matter as much as I think it does?!)

Second deliveries are usually shorter and easier than the first; hopefully that holds true for us!

I'm just looking for some opinions and other experiences as we try to decide how we're going to prepare for this little one's arrival. Can you believe we're at the half way mark already? Doesn't leave a whole lot of wiggle room to squeeze in a 12 week class if that's the route we decide to take!

Welcome to My World

Sunday morning I woke up with an awful crick in my back/neck that made it really painful for me to keep up with Miss Charlotte. Thankfully, Fred watched her while I spent a lot of my time flat on my back with a heating pad on the floor.

After she finally went to sleep for the night, Fred said, "Whew, I'm really tired. She just never slowed down!"

Welcome to my world, Fred, welcome to my world.

The Barrel Man

Fred's cousin slipped a wooden Filipino barrel man into our wedding gift several years ago. I haven't seen much of him since we moved; Charlotte had found him somewhere and Fred then put him back up somewhere.

Well, he turned up again last week; Charlotte found him (somewhere!). She came in holding him, sans his barrel, asking, "what's that?"

My quick response? " Oh, that's his belly button."

Which of course she had to point out and remind me that we were looking at the barrel man's "belly button" several times. Following which, I distracted her and hid barrel man away yet again.

Poor kid is going to be a little confused about anatomy if I keep that guy within playing reach...

Have no idea what the Filipino Barrel Man is? Feel free to find out on your own :-P.

Sharing, or not

Up till now, MC has been fairly good about sharing her toys. Generally if a child takes the toy she's playing with, she'll get upset, but usually she's good letting another child have a toy she's using. Today we had lunch with another mom and son in our Moms' group and I pulled out her crayons. The other little boy picked up two of them and Charlotte had a fit! I told her that if she couldn't share then she had to put the colors away.

She put them away without another peep.

10 minutes later she tried to pull them out again. I asked her to pick one out to give to Dylan. After she contemplated it for a moment, I reminded her that she needed to share or put the crayons away.

Away the crayons went.

Lovely. I'm so glad my daughter would rather not play with her toys if it means sharing them. We're going to have so much fun having two kids in the house :-P.

18 weeks, 2 days *UPDATED*

UPDATED - belly pic! I have to laugh that I am wearing the exact same thing as in the last belly pic. The best part is that I don't think I've worn this skirt since then, and I probably won't again any time soon!
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Our baby is getting bigger and so am I! Fred joined me for the baby's anatomy ultrasound today. Apparently this baby was letting his/her stuff all hang out, so the tech had to keep turning the screen away where we couldn't see it. We're going for another surprise baby, but it's still so hard to not look! This baby is measuring bigger by a week, so maybe it IS a boy. Charlotte never measured big.

We didn't get any great pictures, though - we got the tech who hasn't ever managed to give me a good pic. The baby was turned facing my back, making it hard to get images of the baby's heart and face, so we'll get to go back again in 4 weeks. Hopefully we'll get a good picture then :-)

I owe another belly bump photo; we'll work on that today...