This pregnancy

This pregnancy has been... well, pretty easy.  With Jane, I wasn't sick for very long in my first trimester, but I did throw up a handful of times, smells really bothered me for a couple of weeks and I would get crazy hungry in the middle of the night and almost always got up around two or three for a bowl of cereal.  With this pregnancy, I had almost none of that.  There were just a few nights of waking up absolutely starving... which led to the mango incident.

The Mango Incident
With Jane's pregnancy, I adopted the practice of keeping some kind of snack next to my bed, so when I would wake up sick to my stomach and starving, I could swallow a few bites of a roll and feel well enough to fall asleep again.  Healthy, I know, but you do what you have to, right?  When I started feeling this coming on back in May, I started keeping a bag of dried mangos next to the bed.  One night I woke up a couple of times and half asleep snatched a couple of mangos and went back to sleep.  The next morning, as was my routine, I went and got Jane when she woke up and nursed her in my bed.  Then she and I would hang out together for a bit.  When I got up, I grabbed the bag of mango, closed the top, and put it on the bed thinking Jane might like to play with this.  From the moment the bag touched my white sheets, ants started pouring off the bag in every direction.  I screamed, yanked Jane off the bed and bagged up the ant-infested mango bag as fast as I could.  I then had to kill dozens of ants one at a time with a kleenex and wash my sheets just to be sure.  In the end, I'm not sure how many ants I ate that night as I blindly thrust my hand into the bag and pulled out each mango, but I hope the protein was good for my growing boy.

 Last year, I got pretty bad back pain in my second trimester if I spent more than 10 minutes sitting down, but this time the pain has been very mild.  I really didn't feel anything until the third trimester this time and even now, it's pretty manageable and my husband still gives me lots of back rubs.

In my third trimester with Jane, I blew up like the Michelin Man.  Being pregnant in the summer was awful.  We constantly laughed at my sausage toes, cankles, and swollen face.  So far, this pregnancy hasn't been near as bad.  I still have a significant belly, but I don't think I'm quite as big as last time, and not nearly as uncomfortable.

We'll see how this last month goes...

(These photos were taken at 32 weeks.  Thanks Dan, for the photos)

Jane at 15 Months

Jane is mostly an angel these days.  She is so sweet and plays happily by herself most of the time.  Several times a day she brings me books to read to her and she often busies herself with whatever she can find right next to my feet.  When I’m getting ready in the morning, she’s emptying my nail polish and old make up out of the drawer.  When I’m making dinner in the kitchen, she’s rearranging the Tupperware cupboard and spreading plastic cups and straws everywhere.  When I’m working on the computer, she's rummaging through drawers or finding snacks in the diaper bag.  When I fold laundry, she pulls clothes out of the laundry bin and hands them to me one by one.  She’s my little helper and I adore spending my days with her.  She chatters more, but doesn’t say very many actual words.  A couple weeks ago, she started saying “no” and shaking her head, but because it’s her only word right now and she says it so sweetly, we still think it’s adorable.  I’m sure we’ll get sick of it real soon.  She also says "ruff ruff" when she sees a dog and occasionally makes the sign for "more".  She gives hugs and kisses (which melts my heart) and will find her nose, cheeks, ears, tongue, hair and belly button when we ask her.    

Our front window is low enough for her to look outside, and for some reason, she likes to lick the glass.  (I know the window looks really dirty, but I promise that's on the outside.)

Jane at 14 Months

Some notes about Jane at 14 months old:

• Walks everywhere now.  She picked it up a few weeks ago and now she's pretty steady.  I can't  believe we have a toddler.  
• Loves to stack blocks end on end and can get her towers up to 4 blocks high.  She claps for herself after each successfully placed block.  
• Still loves stuffed animals.  Her bunny, Buster, is by far her favorite, but this pig gets some hugs now and then too.
• Doesn't say much yet or even try and repeat back anything we say.  It seems that "mama" and "dada" work just fine for her.  She knows what they mean, but just likes to chant them over and over as she walks around.
• Loves finding belly buttons (mom's, dad's or her own) but won't do it on command.  
• Knows where your nose is, but again, won't ever perform for us.
• has 5 teeth.
• knows that we keep snacks in the diaper bag and often unloads everything in the bag and brings any food to me to open.
• Loves bath time, but only wants to walk around in the water.  She won't sit anymore.
• bounces aggressively in her jolly jumper and then leans her head back and looks up while she twirls until the rope is nicely twisted and then releases.
• LOVES to watch TV.  She definitely prefers kid shows, but she'll sit happily beside dad on the couch and watch football with him too.  She watches Bubble Guppies every once in a while and thinks the opening song is pretty funny.  If I put Fantastic Mr. Fox on, she'll watch almost the entire movie leaning forward, eyes glued to the TV, and mouth hanging open a little.  It's a little scary.
• Prefers dad when he gets home (which is wonderful since I'm about out of energy by that time of day).  She makes him walk up and down the stairs with her, pushes him around on the floor (he rolls over when she pushes and she giggles), and goes and gets books for him to read to her.  

She makes us laugh all the time as we see more and more personality come out.  She's still just a dream child to us.  She makes excited noises randomly all day long and comes and hugs our legs.  She rarely gets into things she shouldn't.  In the kitchen she seems to know which cupboards and drawers are fair game for her, she doesn't throw anything in the toilet or unroll the toilet paper...  She doesn't even put up a fight when it comes time to go to bed.  It feels like a magically time and we're trying to appreciate every minute of it since this next little guy or future Jane could completely rock our world.  Right now, anyway, things are really good.

October

 

 

I LOVE October!  Pumpkins and candy, corn mazes and colorful leaves, football and fall shows, and maybe most of all... costumes.  I start stressing about costumes around mid August.  I don't do anything about it until mid October, but it's always in the back of my mind as we try and figure out what we're going to be.  We talked about a lot of ideas, but being big and pregnant is really limiting.  Chris finally  said we should just pick one and go all in.  We decided on the Frankenstein family.  Chris likes classic Halloween characters and LOVES makeup.  He was pretty excited when we bought his prosthetic forehead and neck bolts.  Even better, he got to use his "death pallet" and "rotting flesh" makeup from his Zombie days.  Chris' costume came together quickly.  We found some big clompy shoes at DI and he already had the tattered blazer and pants.  His 80's mullet wig turned out to be PERFECT for this costume. (He still considers it one of his greatest purchases.)
We found a simple white dress for Jane at DI and the tattered arm bandages were easy enough, but the tricky part was her hair.  I decided to make her a yarn wig by tying bunches of it to a baby hat.  Then I slipped it over a pumpkin and began styling it with scissors, a glue gun, and some fabric stiffener spray.  I was pleased with how it turned out, but since she won't even wear a bow these days, I had little hope that she would even wear it.  She surprised us and tolerated it most of the two nights we wore these costumes.  
I already had a white sheet in my costume box from an old toga party, so I sewed it into a simple tunic-style dress for me.  Getting the hair up was the key to this costume.  Thank goodness I have a crimper and a three barrel curling iron for just such an occasion.  Using "second-day hair"  I made it as frizzy as possible and wrapped a chunk around a small baby cup at my crown.  Then I just teased the heck out of it and pinned pieces up locking it in place with some hairspray.  Chris then helped me spray it black and white on the sides.  Once up, it was actually quite light and secure.  I could have worn it all day like that.  Getting it all out was another story.
Chris and Jane really stole the show.  People could hardly tell who he was, and let's face it, you put any costume on a 1-year-old and they look absolutely adorable.  It was a lot of work this year, but so fun. Yes, we sure do love Halloween.

 A profile shot.

 

 

 

One-year-old Jane

A few things about Jane at 1:

Jane almost always has Buster (her bunny) with her.  She carefully grabs him by the ear before crawling around and uses him as a pillow when she gets tired.  She has two other stuffed animals she loves: Sprinkles (her duck) and Tommy (her Tiger), but Buster by far gets the most attention.

In the last couple of days she sprouted two new teeth.  Finally.  She got her bottom two several months ago and now you can see her two front teeth just broke through.  She handles teething like a champ.

Just this week Jane waved "bye bye" for the first time, blew her first kisses, and started doing a few of the actions to some of her regular songs.  

Jane's a pretty sensitive girl.  Sometimes other more aggressive but generally well meaning babies will grab at Jane's face or hair or take a toy from her and she doesn't handle it well.  She gets this look like "why are you doing this to me" and then slowly her lower lip slides out and she breaks down in sad tears.  Maybe a little brother will help toughen her up.

Jane weighs 17.2 lbs (11%ile), is 28 inches long (11%ile), and has a head circumference of 18 inches (71%ile).  I'm sure she'll grow into her head some day.

Jane loves eating and starts giggling and twisting from side to side when she sees one of her favorites on its way to her tray.  Some of her favorites include grapes, instant oatmeal, any kind of pasta, avocados, and yogurt.  She does NOT like tomatoes or bread. 

She doesn't walk yet, but she loves cruising around furniture or pushing anything that moves.  She stands by herself only when we stealthily pull our hands away.  As soon as she realizes she's standing independently, she carefully lowers herself to the ground.

Jane is really in to giving and receiving these days.  She loves to hand things to me and then holds out her hand for me to give it back.  When she hands me something, I always say thank you and consequently, she seems to understand that she is supposed to say something when she receives it back, but what she says changes all the time.

I think she knows the words ma ma and da da, but she uses them for more than just her parents so it's kind of hard to tell how often she really means it.

Also, how do you get her to smile from behind the camera?  Tell her the story of the 3 Little Pigs.  It's been a favorite since she was a few months old.  

 Isn't she so sweet?

These ones where taken at Lisa's house in Colorado Springs.