Our "sick day" turned into a sick week. I thought for sure that Nora would be in school on Thursday, but that day she started coughing pretty heavily. She's been having rough nights, too. She again had a low fever, so I kept her home that day. I have a little bit of a cough, myself, and on Saturday I didn't have much of a voice during the day. We're going a little bit stir-crazy, but everyone is in good spirits. Surely she'll be back in school next week? I don't know if we have the flu or not; if we do I guess it's a really, really mild version. Which, I guess if you have to have the flu it might as well be mild, right?

Last weekend, pre-quarantine, we went to the pumpkin patch. Good times--Nora enjoyed apple cider ("It's like apple juice, but it's hot!"), a hay ride, and picking out a pumpkin. I have a hilarious little video of her trying to roll a pumpkin. I really should get another camera cord so I can upload these things. The other day Nora said that she wanted to "cut a hole in my pumpkin and put a face on it and a candle inside," so we decided for the very first time to carve our pumpkin. When I was growing up, my mom always painted ours. Jason said he doesn't remember having pumpkins at his house. We decided to wait until the weekend to tackle it, so last night we got out our dollar store pumpkin-carving kit (we bought it on clearance last year) and decided to make a go of it. This is our result (cameraphone pic).

You'll notice it's toothless. That wasn't the original plan, but whatever, right? It was also supposed to have pupils, but that didn't work out, either. Still, we all worked on it and we all feel a sense of accomplishment. After we were done, I rinsed the seeds and now I'm drying them out so we can roast them later. I don't even like roasted pumpkin seeds very much, but they are a nutritious snack, and Nora and Jason will eat them. I'll nibble on a few. If I end up with more than one cookie sheet's worth, I will probably send a baggie to Nora's class on Tuesday. They could possibly use them for play or for a craft.

If you've ever been on a pregnancy or parenting message board, you may have seen a countdown "ticker." Many women add them to their signatures; you can use them to count just about anything (vacation countdowns, etc.) but pregnancy is the most common. Here's mine.

Is it just me or is 118 days not a long time?

Sick day

Monday night, Nora woke up crying around 1:30. Jason went to check on her and she said, "Daddy, my brain hurts!" She didn't really need anything, though, so she went back to bed. 15 minutes later, Jason was asleep and I heard her whimpering. It wasn't even the type of whimpering I would necessarily check on normally (could have been just sleep noises), but for some reason I decided to go in there and see what was up. I went in and asked her what was wrong, and she said, "I want my daddy." So I picked her up to bring her to our bedroom, and in the hallway she puked on me, and on the floor. By the way, I'm looking forward to the day when puke goes in the toilet at least some of the time. I called for Jason and he took her into the bathroom and instructed her to try to puke into the toilet, but she was like, "What?! No! Why!?" And by that time she was done, anyway.

After we got everyone cleaned up, she was feeling a lot better. We got in my bed and she was in my lap and I told her she couldn't go to school the next day. She said, "But I'm all better! Or it will make me all better if I go to school!" I told her no, she needed to stay home, because she didn't want to get anyone else sick, did she? And she said, "Yes I do." Then she said, "But I can still go to gymnastics...?" Her head was in my lap and she was looking into my eyes. I said, "No, honey, probably not..." and her little eyes welled up with tears. Poor kiddo. Tuesday was the first day of class, and one of her favorite little friends is in the class with her. She was really looking forward to it.

Yesterday we stayed home all day, and Nora was her energetic self all day long. She watched too much TV (my bad), but she also nurtured her dolls and stuffed animals and wheeled them around the house in a stroller. She took them all to the "'Quarium," as she calls it. Late in the afternoon, I was debating letting her go to gymnastics since she was feeling better, but I asked a friend for advice about whether I should send her and warily decided that it was better safe than sorry, so she stayed home.

Today is another "better safe than sorry" day. She woke up with a cough and a fever of 99.9, but she apparently feels like a million bucks. She is bummed about missing school. We're both a little bit bored. I'm a bit of a homebody, so we've spent plenty of days at home in the past, but it's frustrated to feel like we can't leave, even if we wanted to. I'm not very inspired today, but I need to come up with something to do. I might actually have to clean something...

Twenty-one weeks...

...pregnant, that is, and approximately 17-21 weeks left, if all goes well. This time I'm trying not to focus so much on the "due date." One day at a time, yo.

What's been going on around here? I've been feeling the baby move more and more, which is so interesting. As I mentioned before, this is different for me since my placenta was in the front last time and I couldn't feel movement as well as I can this time. I had another ultrasound, and I might as well announce it, the baby is a girl. We think. The first ultrasound wasn't conclusive about the sex. The second one, the technician kept saying she didn't think she was going to get it because of the baby's position. Then, towards the end, she said flatly (she was lacking people skills), "Oh. Looks like a girl." She didn't say she was guessing, and all evidence so far points to girl, so we're just going with it. One of the few upsides to having a higher risk pregnancy (because of the diabetes) is that I will have more ultrasounds and I'm sure if they're wrong about it being a girl we'll find out at some point.

I finally got to meet with my maybe-doula, who is I guess my definite-doula now. We'd made plans to get together a few times, but illness and flooding kept getting in the way. Last week we met at the park and discussed a few things while the kids played. We haven't signed a contract yet, but we have a verbal agreement and plenty of times to work out the details. I'm also planning to take Hypnobabies classes (a friend is sending me the home study, plus I won a 6-week series of in person classes in a silent auction at the Atlanta BOLD event). I'm starting to think about the rest of the pregnancy and learning things I didn't know last time. For example, at our ICAN meeting yesterday we talked about optimal fetal positioning, which I didn't even consider last time. I know it sounds like a lot of learning, but I'm actually much more relaxed about pregnancy overall than I was last time. I enjoy learning more about how my body works, and at this point in my life find pregnancy, birth, and babies fascinating. So I'm really enjoying the mental work of being pregnant.

One thing that I'm not focusing on much these days is the more concrete aspects of bringing a new baby to our home, like the fact that we're going to have to rearrange almost all of our major living spaces in our home. To most people this probably wouldn't be daunting, but organization is not my strong suit, and it's not Jason's, either. We're also procrastinators. I know all of it doesn't have to be done immediately, but I will feel better once we start making some headway. Like, the baby won't be sleeping in the nursery the first few months anyway, so technically moving Nora into the other bedroom could wait until then. But I know myself well enough to know that I won't be in the mood to do any packing, painting, purging, or furniture moving (sorry for the break in alliteration!) when I have a newborn around. So, we'd better hop to it.

Enough about me.

I don't think I mentioned it, but Nora started Sunday School for the first time about a month ago. Our church uses a curriculum called Godly Play. Here's a YouTube video about Godly Play, if you're interested.



Jason and I taught Godly Play about five years ago, and this morning we assisted with Nora's class because the main teacher was out of town. We were a little--okay, very--rusty, but there was another teacher there and we mostly let her lead. The story for the day was Noah and the Ark. One thing that was great about assisting was that we got to observe Nora in Sunday School! I had been really curious about what it was like, and how she acts in class. It's like with her preschool, how I often wish that I could be a fly on the wall. I found that Nora knows the routine of the class very well. I was impressed with her comprehension, too. (I'm a proud parent, so I'm always impressed by Nora. ;) I didn't know how she would respond to us being in the class, if she would pay attention or if she would want to wallow in our lap and ignore the lesson, but she did very well. Yay, Nora!

Jason is asleep. Nora's ready to get up. I want to go for a walk in Piedmont Park this afternoon, so I'm going to get Nora and wake Jason up. There are other things that need to be done (groceries, anyone?), but this afternoon is too beautiful to be missed.

So, Nora told me where she got the lever thing. Apparently Tinkerbell has (? makes?) a lever in the direct-to-DVD Tinkerbell movie we own. Ah, okay. Now I know where she got the idea, but I'm still honestly impressed with her understanding of the concept.

Randomness: I went to the dentist today. I have two small cavities (boo) but the dentist recommended I wait until after the baby to get them filled. I went ahead and scheduled the appointment because if I didn't do it now, I would forget. SO, this means I have something on my calendar that's "after the baby." Whoa. I even had to send a calendar invite to Jason because I'll need for him to keep the baby while I have my appointment. That's so weird.

I think I've been having some ligament pains, and today I got a weird stitch in my side. It hurts and it won't go away. I think I'm finally starting to "feel" a little pregnant. Woohoo?

I've noticed that Nora's expressing herself in a more sophisticated way sometimes. When we're talking her answers are slower, more thoughtful. I can sometimes see the wheels turning in her head. One night last week, she woke up a couple of hours after bedtime with a slight temperature. She got in my bed with me and we read a few more stories and just talked about things for a little bit, until she was feeling better. We were talking about fruit--which types of fruits grow on trees, which ones grow on vines, that kind of thing. I asked her how blueberries grew and she knitted her forehead a little bit and said sleepily, "Umm... I think they grow on vines or something?" Wrong answer (I reminded her about the time we went blueberry picking with friends a while back), but in the past she would have shouted out an answer, right or wrong, without thinking about it first.

Couple of funny/interesting things she's done lately:

• She got a Cinderella Barbie for her birthday. She was playing with it and chattering about her glass slippers, when she realized that Cinderella's (painted-on) shoes were blue. She said, "Hey, how come her glass slippers are blue?" I said, "Umm, maybe they're blue glass?" "Or maybe her feet are just blue," Nora decided.
• She took two plastic Easter eggs and figured out a way to launch one out of the other. She called this her "lever." I observed that it was, in a crude sense, a lever. I don't know where she got this or if I'm understanding her correctly, but it's kind of cool.

I feel like I should have a third thing, but I can't think of anything right now! I did want to write this down now before I forgot it, though.

Updating in little spurts as I think of things. I wanted to mention that I have been feeling the baby move! I had been feeling "flutters" for a while, the kind of thing that could be baby or it could be gas, but in the past week or so it's been very distinctly baby. I'm not feeling specific kicks yet, but what I'm feeling can't be compared to gas anymore. It's kind of like a washing machine in there. A washing machine on the gentle cycle. This is particularly exciting to me because my placenta was in the front last time and I didn't feel a whole lot of of movement.

Pregnancy is obviously the most exciting thing that has happened to me in a while, because I don't feel motivated to update about much of anything else.

I don't know what I was thinking when I said I didn't know what to do with myself while Nora was in preschool. Turns out, there's a lot to be done. After about three years of having Nora with me 24/7, it's like I just remembered that most things in life are easier to do without a baby/toddler hanging around. So now I find myself running errands, scheduling appointments, and scrambling to get things done around the house while she's at school. And 4 hours a day suddenly doesn't seem like such a long time. Eek!

I'm really going to bummed at the end of the pregnancy when I'm going to the doctor twice a week. That's two preschool mornings that will be eaten up by doctor's appointments., because somehow appointments always seem to take longer than they should.