Another Pregnancy Update.

So, after all that getting up at night for a 4th meal, baby must've done some serious growing, 'cause my BELLY popped out yesterday! Seriously, it seemed like it happened overnight. I suddenly realized, I can't suck it in anymore. It's definitely a Prego Belly.




The nausea has definitely become more mild....I'd even venture to say bearable. Thank goodness Tessi, my sister, came to stay with me for a month, giving me such a relief from housework so that I was able to spend what energy I did have on responding to Violet's needs. For a while there, after we first moved in and I was throwing up with no relief, I wondered if I was going to make it through this pregnancy by myself. God is merciful, though, and it's looking like I'm going to do fine.

The hunger, the demanding, mind-consuming, obsessive HUNGER that I experienced the last few weeks has been dizzyingly strange! Last pregnancy I could hardly eat ANYTHING. I lost 10 pounds in my first trimester, and was just back to my regular body weight and beginning to show a belly at 6 MONTHS! This time around, I'm eating ALL DAY LONG and even once at night, and my belly is out at 2.5 months. Yep, they say they're all different!

At the moment, I feel relatively normal, except for needing to much on fruit and cheese all day long. I do still retain some food sensitivities, though nothing consistent other than, "if I had it yesterday, I won't be able to stomach it for weeks after." Leftover nights are a thing of the past. It was a struggle for Tessi to fix meals for exactly 3 people, with no extras. Any more than that and she'd be eating it by herself for days!

Another saga I've recently overcome has been the Insurance Company Battle. Not that our insurance isn't pretty good......I mean, we get decent coverage, as far as the medical world goes. (that is, the things we value for our true health like, chiropractic, massage for my FMS, and herbal supplements are never covered). It's just that, the staff are incapable of solving a problem for you in one step. You must get passed around, you must fill out forms (the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper and fax), you must wait for responses in the MAIL, people!! and you must eventually start over again with your own help from smart insurance beneficiaries you find on google! Yes, Google was my biggest source of assistance in accquiring healthcare from my dashed insurance company, if you can believe it. Once I knew the answers to my questions, I could then call up Tricare and prompt them to answer my questions correctly!

Anyhow, as it stands, I am downgraded (which is really more of an upgrade, if you ask me) to TriCare Standard, so that I can see any "network" provider and they will pay for all my maternity care. As of now, I will be getting a midwife to attend the birth at the hospital, and receive all my prenatal care from her, as well. Thank goodness it's not my original PCM, a 60+ year old Army dr. who also is chief of family planning at the "women's clinic" here in town.......i.e., "head abortion doctor."

As for exercise, I'm still running, and I'm still trying to push myself back up towards 3 miles 3 times a week.....but it's slow-going when pregnant. The blood increase thing kicks my butt. :( I'm also religiously working on my core muscles. Last pregnancy I was NOT in good shape in that area, and ended up with torn cartilidge between my ribs on my left side. There's a HOLE in there, which I can fit 2 fingers into, and it still provides me some pain once in a while. I really hope to avoid that this time around.

So there you have it. Biggest hurdle overcome (nausea), and lots of happier times to come, I hope!

Mothering

This post is an effort to glean from my readers' thoughts, experiences, and tactics for dealing with some child-raising issues that have developed for us recently. 2 things have arisen recently with our daughter, which raise questions with me, as I find myself almost tongue-tied when responding to her, so great is my ignorance for dealing with these issues. I hope you will comment liberally!

Firstly, LYING. How do you teach a child to tell the truth? When do you gauge they are old enough to understand the difference between what they *want* the truth to be, and what really happened?

Here's the scenario: "Violet, go to the bathroom and wash your hands." she obeys. 2 minutes later, she comes out with an absent-minded look on her face. "Did you wash your hands?" I ask, feeling that they are still sticky with supper, and indeed, she has not. "Yes, I did." is her confident reply, while looking me straight in the eyes. Hmmm.....what is going on here? What should my response be? Is it even important yet, that I point out to her that there is a difference between the truth and an untruth? She certainly carries no deception in her. Guilt, she sometimes has, when she is caught in a wrong (playing with books and toys during naptime). I know how to read guilt in her. But in this, there is no guilt. I am not sure how to proceed. What do you think?

Secondly, there is consistency in obedience. As Violet grows older, I want her responsibilities to grow with her. With baby #2 on the way, I want to be able to say, "Violet, go bring me such-and-such." while I'm nursing, and have her do it. However, she gets easily distracted, especially when I send her on an errand in another room, where she is not under my watchful eye, conscious of my command echoing around her. I understand that this ability to retain a command and accomplish it without supervision comes with growth. However, I am seeing complications with just letting her mature in this without responding to her actions, in addition to another bad habit forming during this "growth period."

Here's the scenario: "Violet, go upstairs and get into your bed and wait for me." She trots towards the stairs obediently. On the way up, she pauses on the landing to reach for blankie. This reminds her of "paci" and she detours to my bedroom for paci. Once in my room, she sees "Mr. Putter & Tabby" on the floor, and decides to plop down for a read. When I get upstairs, she is nowhere near her bed, as I've asked her. I call her, and usually she responds with a guilty start, and hurries towards her bed, bottom first, hands splayed protectively. Obviously, she's had a rush of conscience (and memory), and realized she's disobeyed. It is difficult not to apply the stick of training to assuage the guilty conscience at that point, since she's realized that she has technically disobeyed. However, I'm reluctant to administer a spanking for "forgetting" or "getting distracted" with one so young. Yet, how DOES one help a growing child to retain a command for more than a few seconds? I dislike just letting it slide, for then I begin to notice the trend worsening, where she will not even run straight away to the stairs at my command, but while still in my presence, she will delay obeying while reaching for this toy, or finishing up with that puzzle, or something like. See my dilemma?

Tell me your thoughts on this, friends. I am eager to hear of your successes/failures/untried theories.

Finished Product

So here is the downstairs, for your inspection. We did not choose the paint color, it was given to us by the owners. Most of the furniture you see came with the house, but the wall-hangings are my own.

....as is the little Girl in the last few photos. :D











She puts this on and then tells me, "Mommy, I'm a Sleepin' Booty!"

Mystery Solved!

A week or so ago I blogged about a phase Violet was going through that made her super-clingy at bedtime. She would hold me tightly or reach for me crying, "Mommy, I neeeeeeed you!" and would go on and on with that after I left the room. I fluctuated between trying to be firm with her, calm her down, and tell her to stop crying and just go to sleep...to holding her for 45 minutes or more, singing to her, stroking her face, trying to lull her to sleep. Nothing seemed to be successful. She went in and out of this for over a week. Some nights I'd tell her firmly to go to sleep, and she'd just do it, other nights we'd go over and over with the screaming sessions.

Then last night, something clicked.

Once in a while, in the past weeks, I'd hear footsteps upstairs, trekking into her bathroom (she has her own personal bathroom in the house). I assumed she was using the potty, and hopping back into bed, as the footsteps never continued for more than a few seconds. ALSO, once or twice, I'd gone into her room in the morning, and found her in her bathroom. Not something I thought unusual, she was just getting up and going potty first thing! Well, last night, I heard the footsteps again, after a long session with her (crying, "Mommy, Mommy, I neeeeed you!") and I had told her this time not to get out of bed since I'd already taken her potty before I left. I crept upstairs and opened her door. She WAS in the bathroom, but NOT going potty. She had dragged her pillow and blankie into the bathroom, turned on the light, and was setting up camp on the floor in there for the night! It dawned on me, then.....she had been doing this for DAYS now.....and it was probably the only thing that had kept her calm on those non-screaming nights!

POOR BABY!

I asked her what she was doing, and she confirmed to me she was going to sleep (of course, silly mommy). I told her it didn't look very cozy, and why don't we just try the bed again? She broken-heartedly obeyed, and then (poor thing) choked out, "Mommeeee, Mommeeee.....wujjyou fix my bed? It's broken!" I looked up and saw just the bones of her canopy up there, no fabric yet. We still hadn't gotten a cover for it since the last one had acquired some bugs living in it after being in storage for 5 years. She was truly distraught over the barren look of it, and my heart melted. I found an old quilt and jimmy-rigged it over the "rafters" and she giggled for joy! Then I brought her up a nightlight and put it right beside her bed so she could look at it while she dozed off. This made her even more happy! I also left the bathroom light on, and told her she may get up to use the potty, but she must lie back down in her bed when she was finished. She seemed perfectly at ease, though tired, when I finally left at 8:45 pm.

She slept peacefully ALL night long, till 8:30 the next morning! I went to check on her after I got up....still sound asleep in the bed!

I won't even begin to describe how guilty I felt over this .....I've tried to tell myself I'm still just learning, to be a mother. It's just that---she's such a fearless creature in every other respect that it never dawned on me she could be scared of her room, or her bed, or just the darkness. Silly me!

Anyhow. We went out to buy canopy fabric today. :D I'll be posting pictures of it AND the rest of the house pretty soon. Keep watching!

I Miss You, Love!

This piece was our first dance at our wedding. It's Peter Gabriel's, "The Book of Love."

How great a thing is the Love that God has created for a man to enjoy with his wife. Every year of our marriage that goes by is a bountiful harvest of oneness, comfort, tender friendship, and divine grace worked out between us. I look forward to year after year of learning my husband, learning to be Christ towards him, growing in grace and in oneness. I hope we grow old enough together to know the "things we're all too young to know." If not in this life, then in the next!

Praise God for His Love lavished on His children by giving us each other!

Preggo Post

Well, this is just a kind of glorified status update for all y'all who've been phoning my sister (LOL) to ask her how I'm doing! :D

Truthfully, this pregnancy has been mildly less difficult than the last. Last time, I threw up every single day until I was well into my 8th month. I suffered daily migraines from month 7-9, and had pretty intense rib/hip pains, too. This time around, by 7 1/2 weeks pregnant, I've only thrown up once, and had 3 migraines, and I'm running 2 miles twice a week and working on my core muscles to keep those rib pains to a minimum. The nausea is relentless, though, and my food preferences/cravings are utterly unpredictable, senseless, and difficult to get a handle on. I am struggling, honestly, right now, with balancing life with a toddler, a new home to settle into (you'd be amazed how long it takes to get the final boxes unpacked and stuff up on the walls!), getting food cooked, and appointments kept. I've missed 2 very important bills so far, and paid the price for them both.....and missed Violet's gymnastics for this semester......and *not* written many letters I should've written.....and obviously fallen behind on blogging......some days it feels like all I get done is a conversation (over the course of 4 hours, intermittently depending on connection and Ben's schedule) with my husband, and the dishwasher emptied. I'm lucky if I can stomach making Violet a PB&J for lunch, the closest thing to homemade food I can do at the moment. P.S. I haven't done my hair but twice since moving here September 19th.

On the other hand, my sister, Tess, has come up to visit, and has faithfully cooked and done dishes every meal for days, now, and lifted a huge burden off my shoulders. Not having to be in the kitchen is a really big blessing. She's also gotten some painting done, pictures up, and furniture rearranged. It's been great. However, my Violet has taken this opportunity to begin expressing her separation (from her Daddy) anxiety. She goes from intense playing to desperately wanting my attention, then back again to her very focused play (not involving me at all), and then demanding that I come "taste her milkshake" and "sit me and watch me" in the tub, and then dissolving into begging tears of, "Mommy, I neeeeeeed you!" at night when I put her to bed. I have spent upwards of 45 minutes just calming her into bed so that I can get up and leave without her clinging to my neck.

I'm frightened of what is appearing before me here.....before I even have the second child to care for! Two? Who can have TWO?! I wonder sometimes....

So, I feel half the burden is lifted, having such great help at home with daily tasks, but this new thing looming before me called, Mother of Two.....I just don't know. I'm not handling single mother of one very well right now.

I would love to hear what some of you mothers of two are thinking, reading my struggles. What are your methods of dealing with Household Stuff, and more than one child? Do your children cling to you? Do you play with them endlessly? Do you teach them to be alone? How do you get anything done? Please comment.