Crystal Cove

Crystal Cove is beautiful beach state park.  The picturesque village was originally built as a sea side colony movie set in the 1930s and the beach is full of tide pools and sandy coves.  We went down for a nice walk and some tide pool exploration, but didn't expect it to be such a beautiful beach day.  I wish we'd brought swimsuits and towels.

  Mason doesn't look too excited to be holding this starfish.

 

 

 Jane was surprisingly interested in touching the sea life.  She loved to poke the sea anemones and watch them recoil.  It's so fun to watch her explore things.

Lunch at the Shake Shack.  Tasty, but over-priced.

Christmas

 We drove down to California for the holidays.  My back has been giving me just a little more trouble these days, so I was a little worried it was going to be a miserable drive, but we all managed quite surprising well...  Even though the normally 9 hour trip took us 13.5 hours. More frequent stops for me and a detour in Las Vegas contributed, but mostly it was traffic south of Barstow, CA.  We made it though, and the 80 degree weather was worth it.  We got in on the 23rd and spent Christmas Eve with the Reids.  They whipped up a superb Christmas dinner complete with a spiral cut ham, candied yams, and martinelli's.  It was a fun evening.

We had Christmas morning at Chris' mom's house.  Jane came downstairs to a Little People Noah's Ark  from Santa.  She was interested, but not nearly as excited as she was about the hot wheels cars she got in her stocking.  She also got a stuffed penguin, some books and Disney's Peter Pan (which she watched several times while we were there).  She got a baby doll from Grandma Silva and a baby Anna doll (Frozen) from Grandpa.

Before we left for California we opened a few presents including this one from my parents for Jane.  She was pretty excited about her pony, but the real treat was when she found out it played music and talked. She would push the button and sit down in front of the mouth and swing her arms back and forth.  It's the first time we've really seen her bust out a real dance move.

 We did Christmas dinner at Erik and Juliana's house.  As the only toddler in a house full of adults, Jane was well taken care of.  She got passed from person to person, but that doesn't really bother her.  Mostly, though, she just wanted to follow the dogs around and pet them occasionally.

 

 I got to go to Laura's baby shower while we were there.  She is due with a little girl just a week before I'm due.

 Cute little Reid kids.

 

 

 

 

 

 36 weeks pregnant.

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.)