Stay Classy

Merry Christmas to all...

...and to all a good night! Hopefully you're all snug in your beds, wearing Christmas jammies, of course.

I, sadly, am at work and am missing this adorableness. But just a few more hours, and then I'll be home for 5 straight days of baby hugs.

Merry Christmas! 

And a child shall lead them...

It's a good things we have Brady to keep us on the straight and narrow. Otherwise, who knows what kind of crazy heathens we'd be?

His latest obsession is holding hands and saying a prayer every time we sit down at the table. Three times a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Inevitably, a few minutes into whatever meal it is, he'll start asking "Prayer? Say prayer?" So we do.

The only problem is that he gets bored literally seconds later. His solution? (And I swear this is true!) He starts whispering the name of whatever it is he's waiting to eat.

"Mac and cheeeeeeseeeee...."

 Obviously this isn't something I necessarily want to encourage, but do you have any idea how hard it is not to laugh? Instead, I try to keep a straight face and quietly shush him. Last night, he had a follow up.

"Say amennnnn..."

Seriously, that kid cracks me up.

Project 365

12/14/09

Ice falling from the sky is definitely inconvenient... but it sure makes for beautifully decorated trees! (This picture was taken from inside the house because it also makes for ungodly cold temperatures.)

12/15/09

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

(Although not enough care, apparently, to get Brady a new stocking. Next year.)

12/16/09

I love the Lincoln Children's Museum. I love it even more at 10am on a Wednesday morning, when we practically have the place to ourselves. Brady loves giant fireman boots.

12/17/09

Paul has a friendwho is a crazy good artist, and has started a new venture sketching live online. Paul gave him a picture of me and told him what I did for a living, and this is what he came up with. Pretty cool!

12/18/09

One of my favorite parts of the Christmas season is going through the mail everyday. I love Christmas cards-- especially the ones with adorable kids on them!

12/19/09

It's no secret that we love the Peanuts characters around here. So it warms out hearts that Brady can now name the Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and Lucy hanging on our tree! He demonstrated his skill for my friends Barb and Summer after we all went out to lunch on Saturday, and I think they were suitably impressed.  

12/20/09

Thanks to a fabulous Christmas present from Julie and Bella, there has been a lot of reading of tiny Sesame Street books around our house lately.

 

Months 21 & 22

Dear Brady,

I suppose you can gather from the fact that I'm having to lump two months together that things have been a little busy around here lately. Much of that, I'm afraid, can be tied to the fact that you're going to be a big brother in a few short months. But I promise that this is not a sign of things to come, and that it does not mean that your needs are already getting put on the back burner. So don't mention this to your therapist in 20 years, ok?

Good Lord, do you ever have a lot to say these days. You wake up in the morning talking, you talk through breakfast (as I beg you to please just chew so you don't choke), and then you set out on another long day of chatting. You talk about letters and numbers, you talk about firetrucks and airplanes, you talk about whatever you saw on Sesame Street the day before, you repeat whatever you hear us say. Lately, you also talk a lot about all things Christmas-- the tree, the lights on the houses, all your Christmas books. Thanks to the "Christmas in the Manger" book that is a current obsession, you also like to tell us that Christmas was when "Baby Jesus is BORN!"

You learned how to say "Happy Birthday" this month, and have used it to make the day of Grandpa Ken, Uncle Andy, and Julie, all of whom have had recent birthdays. You like to comment that things are "Wonderful!" (we have no idea where that came from), and you wish us "Sweet Dreams" before bed. You like to directly address me, which is disarmingly adorable-- "Cookie please, Mama." "No, Mama." Thank you, Mama." It makes it really hard to stay mad at you when, in the middle of giving you a stern "You may not...", you come back with a sweetly whispered "Okay, Mama." By far my favorite, though, is your ever-ready "Lub you, Mama."

I would be remiss not to mention perhaps the most exciting development around here lately, which has been our first real step into the frightening new world of potty training. Given how much you love all your books about the potty, we figured it was time to at least give it a try... and so far, so good. We've started incorporating some sitting on the potty time into your day, and you seem to have learned the pattern well enough that you pretty much go as soon as you sit down. The first time you peed on that potty was a major celebration-- and then last night, you pooped. You should have seen the number of exclamation points your dad used in the text he sent me at work after that happened. We'll just say he was proud. I don't think you're ready to move beyond diapers yet, but you're certainly on your way.

It's been amazing over the last few weeks getting to see you really experience Christmas for the first time. I know that last year was technically your first Christmas, but you're so much more aware now. Christmas trees are endlessly exciting (and getting you not to un-decorate ours is endlessly frustrating for me), but not quite as big a deal as Christmas lights. To indulge your fascination, last weekend we took a drive to the neighborhoods with big houses and lots of lights. We drove you around, pointing out all the different colored lights and sharing chocolate chip cookies. Another night, we indulged your new love of Snoopy (you now sleep with the Santa Snoopy that was boxed up with all the Christmas decorations) and let you watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "It's Christmas Time Again, Charlie Brown", both of which absolutely enthralled you. You laughed out loud when Sally couldn't remember her line in the Christmas play, and woke up the next morning shouting both her real line ("Hark!"), and what she said instead ("Hockey Stick!"). I can't tell you how much more fun this time of year is with you around.

You saw your first real snow this month, we all survived a family bout with the Swine Flu, you ate turkey and mashed potatoes on your first Thanksgiving, and we found out that you are going to have a little brother. You screamed in abject terror on Santa's lap, spent 3 days alone with your dad while I was in California, and helped pick out your first big-boy bed (you're still sleeping in your crib for now, but the purchase has been made).

You continue to charm people everywhere you go, and are, as always, the light of our lives. Your smile is one of my favorite things on earth, second only to your laugh.

Love, Mom

Project 365

12/7/09

(Since we're currently scanner-less, I had to take a picture of a picture here.)

On Monday morning, we found out that our baby is a boy... and that he apparently enjoys poking himself in the eye with his thumb. I must be blinded by love, because I find this somehow irresistibly adorable.

12/8/09

We were actually given this ornament when I was pregnant with Brady, but it's suddenly appropriate again. Let the hand-me-downs begin!

12/9/09

Poor Paul. There was a LOT of snow out there on Wednesday morning, and somehow it all seemed to blow up against our front door. Plus, I think it was literally about 4 degrees out while he was shoveling. He's a braver soul than I.

12/10/09

Daddy has fun boots! They almost fit... right?

12/11/09

Brady got a haircut on Friday morning, complete with a spiky new 'do in the front. I can't get over how old he looks in this picture! Where did my baby go?

12/12/09

We visited Santa on Saturday. Brady was all excited to tell Santa that he wants trains for Christmas... until it was actually his turn, at which point he started screaming in abject terror. He didn't calm down until we were completely out of the building and safely removed from Santa. Oh, well. Every kid has to have one of these, right? 

12/13/09

I believe the technical term for this is a 'crap-ton' of Christmas cookies. There are over 150 of them, and it took me about 3 hours to bake them all. They go out in the mail to various family members tomorrow. This pregnant lady's back hurts. 

  

It's official...

...I'm going to be WAY outnumbered.

At the ultrasound yesterday morning, saw unmistakable evidence that Baby D2 is absolutely a boy!

Not that it was a surprise to me. Somehow I already knew, which is really weird for me. I generally have terrible intuition, brought on mostly by the fact that I tend to over think everything until I can't tell what my initial intuition was, or even if I ever had one. And actually, for the early part of my pregnancy, I had a hunch that the baby was a girl. Then, sometime over this past weekend, I became absolutely certain that we were getting another boy. And there he was!

It's funny-- I get the sense that some people expect me to be disappointed with another boy. I can honestly say I'm not, and I've thought about it a lot. I think I actually wanted a girl more when I was pregnant with Brady, mostly because I just didn't know if I'd know what to do with a boy. But now that I'm so head-over-heels in love with the boy I was given, and have first-hand knowledge of just how much freaking fun little boys are to have around, I'm really excited. 

Also, we figure that in this economy, having another baby of the same sex really is the fiscally responsible thing to do.

So there you have it-- it seems that it is my lot in life to be surrounded my charming, handsome, funny men. It could be a lot worse.  

There is, however, the fact that Paul says this all means I'm doomed to a life of football and fart jokes. Also, he says the men in our house now have a filibuster-proof majority.

Ok... so maybe I'm a little scared. :)

Project 365

11/30/09

Everybody kept talking about how Monday would be the last nice day, so I figured we'd better do something outside. I'm glad we did, because they were right-- it's been freezing ever since.

12/2/09

Someday, I will learn to go online and check the schedule before I promise Brady that we're going to storytime at the library. This is literally the third time we've tried to go only to find out that it's been canceled for some reason or another, which means Brady will ask me "library closed?" no fewer than 846 times over the course of the afternoon (and no, the library was not closed-- just no storytime). Fortunately he likes the toys in the children's section, so it wasn't a total loss. We picked out some books and played until a little girl with snot pouring down her face decided she wanted to be friends with Brady and kept trying to hand him things. At that point, I suddenly decided that it was time to go.

12/04/09

I could be wrong, but this week may have been the first time that Channel 8 has ever had a two-woman anchor team on the desk (Rod was on vacation, and the weekend anchor filled in for him). Vanessa and I felt very liberated.

12/05/09

This year, Brady was all about helping to decorate the tree...

(Please ignore the awkward crotch-grab. How else was Paul supposed to hold him up over his head?)

Men at work.

12/06/09

Cozy Christmas house (So it's a little dark-- the good camera had a dead battery. Sue me.)

 

For his next trick, he'll cure blindness

So I am about to totally lose those of you who don't have kids.

I know this because until what happened this morning happened this morning, I had no idea how truly and unreasonably exciting it would be.

So here, in no particular order, are some momentous events in world history:

-A man walked on the moon

-The Berlin wall came down

-Polio was eradicated

-My kid peed in the potty. Twice. In the same day.

I think it was all more a coincidence than anything else (as in, if you leave a naked kid sitting on a potty for long enough, eventually he'll have to pee), but that didn't lessen the excitement.

Paul happened to come upstairs at that exact moment, to find Brady sitting there with a giant grin on his face, and me cheering "You went pee-pee in the potty! You went pee-pee in the potty!" I wish you could have seen the look on his face-- it was like someone had just told him Brady had recited the quadratic equation. Utter shock. Then he starting saying, over and over again, "That's amazing. That's amazing." So of course, Brady joined in.

"I amazing! I amazing!"

We are paragons of level-headed parenting.

The Second Time Around

I've already done this once. I'm a veteran! That should make it all easier, right? No worries!

That's what I thought, at least, when I imagined myself pregnant with a second child. I know what to expect. I know what it all feels like. I know what I worried about last time, and how I drove myself crazy, and how all my worries always turned out to be unfounded.

Here's what I forgot: I would still be me. Be it my second or my 46th pregnancy, I will always be Lauren. And Lauren? Yeah, she worries. A lot. About almost everything. Almost all the time.

I try. Really, I do. I try to remember that I am not in charge here. I was not the one who decided when and if I could even get pregnant, and I most certainly am not the one who decides if I will stay pregnant. I don't get to decide if my baby will be healthy. I don't get to decide if I will have another easy pregnancy. I don't get to decide how Brady will react to having a sibling. I don't get to decide.  

Somehow, that's simultaneously the most comforting and terrifying realization I have ever had.

So while I am trying not to think about how long it's been since the last time I felt the baby move (which, given that I am not quite 18 weeks, is never more than once every day or two), I will myself to focus on the gratitude. I am grateful for the husband who listens to my worries, over and over again, and yet doesn't murder me while I sleep. I am grateful for the beautiful, brilliant (and I am completely unbiased on the issue) little boy who has no idea how his life is about to change. I am grateful for the tiny person growing inside me who leaves me awestruck by all the beauty and hope and mystery in the world. (Sorry-- the pregnancy hormones apparently make me prone to stomach-churning sentimentality.)

So that's where I am. I'm Lauren, and I worry. I'm just so grateful to have such wonderful things to worry about.

Project 365

11/23/09

We're being brave and once again attempting to move Brady to a booster seat at the table rather than the high chair. Last time, it didn't go well. Now that he understands the concept of "do you want a time-out?", the whole transition is going much better.

11/24/09

The turkey I cooked on Tuesday. Sigh.

11/26/09

I made a pumpkin spice cake on Thanksgiving, and despite what it looks like in this picture, it actually turned out pretty well. I am apparently not the world's greatest food photographer.

11/27/09

A real friend brings you dealcoholized wine (who knew such a thing existed?) when you're pregnant. Thanks, Barb.

11/28/09

There was a surprise party going on for Julie's birthday party on Saturday night, but Brady and Bella didn't seem to mind. It's always the appropriate time for an art project.

11/29/09

I'm really, really glad that Paul has good friends like Brent, because otherwise there might never be Christmas lights on our house. I am somewhat short on patience when it comes to the whole light-hanging process. The older I get, the more I understand why my parents sometimes skipped them altogether.