Kiddo Update (just for you mom)

I've gotten a complaint that I'm not blogging enough (despite the fact the the complainer hears everything firsthand and doesn't actually read anything new in the blog) so here's an update.
Josey is still having some issues staying dry. He doesn't often totally wet his pants (and when he does he takes off his pants and underwear and hides them from us), unless he does it while he's having his nap, but I think he starts to pee then realizes that he has to go and finishes up in the toilet. This leads to a pretty constant dampness that I don't usually notice unless I take a good feel. He's also waking up in soaked pyjamas in the mornings because once he gets his pullup on after his bath he feels like he doesn't have to go in the toilet anymore and the pullup ends up overfull by the morning. We're gently trying to convince him to use the toilet in the middle of the night, even if it means waking us up, but so far he's not buying it. I don't know that he really cares enough to make an effort.
We started listening to the Learn Italian CDs again this morning because of my renewed interest in the trip to Italy, and Josey is really listening to it and repeating words.
Roanen has been sleeping really well lately, but last night he woke up at 12:30, then screamed off and on in his bed and ours until after 4:30. Needless to say I'm exhausted and not feeling well today.
Roanen is getting into EVERYTHING lately, and I've caught him on top of the chest freezer several times (once in a laundry basket that was hanging off the edge), and now he can climb up onto the kitchen chairs, then up onto the island where he plays with the pots and pans hanging down. He also climbs up the couch onto the windowsill in the livingroom and tries to do chin-ups holding on to the top of the bottom window. The two couches are positioned on either side of the window, so if he falls there's a perfect space for him to fall right to the floor. Really looking forward to that.
On the not-frustrating side of things, Roanen is developing quite the vocabulary that includes frog (fwa), duck - quack quack (du - ka ka), banana (nana or danana), dirty (duhty), water (wa-a), doggie (doddy), kitty (teetee), baby (baba), Mama, Dada, and several others that I don't remember right now. He also loves music and will dance to anything, getting his shoulders and bum into the act as well. So far he won't do it for the camera so we don't have any proof though.
Both boys have a strong interest in the flies and ladybugs that are everywhere in the house, and I often catch one or both of them with a handful of dead or live flies. The ladybugs let off a stink when they're harassed so there's pretty much a constant ladybug smell surrounding them.
That's the update. Don't expect anything for at least a week now :)

Prenatal Appointment #2 - Originally Typed March 21/07

Yesterday I had my second prenatal appointment where they did the usual blood pressure, height of uterus, etc. I heard the heartbeat for the first time (always a good thing for a baby to have...) and mentioned all the symptoms I've been having that I thought meant that I was anemic. The nurse checked my bloodwork and my iron levels were fine, so she asked a bunch of questions to clarify it all. End result is that I had to go get more blood taken to check my thyroid because she thought it sounded like an issue with that, especially when I mentioned offhand (feeling silly) that I was freezing cold all the time. I never really thought that being cold could be a sign of anything, but when I got home and checked my countless medical and pregnancy books I saw it everywhere as a sign of hypothyroidism. Other than that and the extreme fatigue I don't really have any other symptoms though, but it also says that symptoms can come on really slowly over the course of years sometimes. Who knows. It would be nice to be able to fix being cold and my complete lack of motivation and energy, but I'm nervous about actually having anything to do with my thyroid because all the books say that it can affect the baby's brain development and hearing if it's left untreated long enough. I should probably throw all my medical books out, but I like knowing what's going on too much to actually do it.
I'm showing a bit more, especially when I wear maternity shirts, so I've taken to wearing a huge wool sweater that pretty much hides everything every day. Of course that's also because I'm freezing and have to wear layers just to keep remotely warm, but that's just a good excuse. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to hide it, particularly with Easter coming up, so I may have to spill the beans sometime before then. I've been having recurring dreams that I tell my mom about it and she's very unhappy or mad at me for it. Makes it all a lot easier! I think I may just send out a group email (how personal is that?) to avoid the whole big deal and hugs thing. Yech. My dislike of that gets worse with every pregnancy, but at least it's not as big a deal as with the first, so it's a little more acceptable for me to be like this :) By the fourth one I'll just be like "Oh, and by the way I had a baby last week".

Time Change for the Better?

I figured that the time change would mess the kids up for a couple of days, then they would adjust and go back to their normal sleep and wake-up times. That doesn't really seem to be the case, especially for Roanen. He usually doesn't wake up until at least 7:15 or 7:30 now, which I can definitely deal with. Josey also doesn't wake up until well after Russ has gotten up too. As for bedtime, if Josey doesn't sleep past 4:00 in the afternoon he's good for an 8:00 bedtime (which usually doesn't happen), but Roanen definitely won't go down at 7:00 anymore. More like 8:30 or 9:00, but he hasn't been waking up more than once, and has slept right through about half of the nights in the past week. The one day he had only one nap I tried to put him down at 7:45 because he was tired and he screamed and fussed for an hour, then woke up about 5 times and wouldn't stay asleep unless I was in bed with him. So we've had to make adjustments, but I don't mind because I'm sleeping way better than I was a month ago.

Ultrasound - Originally Typed March 17/07

On Thursday I went for my second ultrasound, mainly because I wanted to get the maternal serum screening done (despite my doctor telling me that there wasn't much chance of a problem and that it was just going to cause me more worrying than it was worth), but also because I wanted to get a more accurate idea of how far along I really am. Everything went as well as can be expected, and this one dated me at 13 weeks and 1 day, which is 6 days further along than they originally thought. They're still not changing my due date, which is September 25th (I think), but I'm going to say that I'm due on the 19th, which means I'll probably have it at the beginning of September, considering I've gone early twice previously and I still think the dates are a little behind. We got a couple of pictures which are now displayed on the fridge until people come to visit, and when I asked Josey what they looked like he said "That was when you were growing Roanen". I think he's mildly suspicious though so I'm not going to talk about it anymore with him. When the ultrasound tech showed me the first really good profile picture I thought the features looked a lot more delicate than for the boys and kind of girly (wishful thinking? It's probably a pretty boy) but the head looked big like Josey's. We're still not going to find out the sex, though, despite Russ wanting to.

One, Four, Three, Four

Taking lessons from Russ, Josey has begun enumerating things for us to do, and he gets very upset if he's interrupted. Yesterday afternoon he started talking to me when I was on the phone, and when I continued talking he said (and held up fingers) "Mommy! Mommy! One - Settle down! Four - Listen to me! Three - I want to go to Grammie's. Four - PLEEEEEAASE!" I just about peed myself laughing, so he got pretty insulted. It was hilarious though.

Sweet Sleep

Last night Sir-Used-To-Scream-A-Lot (we had to change the name) slept from 8:45 to 5:45 this morning without a peep. That's 9 hours! Amazing! I still can't believe how easy and stress-free this has all been. To celebrate and take advantage of it, this weekend we're leaving the kids with Grammie and Grampa and heading off on a little secret (not a secret for me) location for some child-free r&r. Much needed. It'll be good to get away because Josey has decided that this week he's going to be hugely disobedient and just generally bad (for example, typing that sentence was just interrupted by him yanking the cord on the extremely heavy space heater so hard that it fell over, narrowly missing the baby). He's also waiting too long before heading to the bathroom so he ends up peeing himself a little every time he has to go. Monday afternoon he fell asleep in our bed for his nap and peed through the top sheet, fitted sheet, mattress pad, and an inch of memory foam. And I only noticed at 10:00 at night when I climbed into bed and smelled something funny. Always an adventure. He's being really good with his brother though, and sharing really well and playing a lot, which is really nice to see. (As an aside, the r key on my computer randomly stops working and I end up having to copy and paste rs from somewhere on the screen - I can't find a capital r which is why I'm not writing roanen's name)
roanen (there, I did it and it looks dumb) seems to have stopped what we thought was teething. He was needed to be constantly dosed on Tylenol for a few days but his crying has all but stopped. Maybe it was just a delayed reaction from his shot. At least he doesn't seem to be autistic yet...

Screamy (But Sleepy) Baby

Roanen was still freaking out every time his Tempra ran out yesterday so we dosed him just before bed. I heard him wake up and fuss a little a couple of times, but he slept from about 9:15 right through until about 5:30. Of course he freaked when he woke up, and didn't end up going back to sleep, but it was a good night overall and I had gotten enough sleep to let Russ sleep in without being cranky myself. Roanen is still out of sorts today, and I'm partly worried that it's being caused by his MMR shot a couple of weeks ago, which the doctor said could affect him up to two weeks later. Or the really panicky part of me is worried that the tales of the MMR vaccine causing autism are true. There are times during the day that I feel like Roanen is 3 months old again and screaming hysterically whether he's being held or not. Not fun.

What??

Last night Josey's hives got progressively worse and really itchy. We gave him a dose of Benadryl at bedtime and fully expected him to be up in the middle of the night complaining, but he ended up sleeping right through. When he got up this morning his entire body was clear of the rash, with no sign of it at all. Now we really don't know what caused it. Hopefully it won't come back.
Roanen now seems to be teething. He had a really rough night and cried a lot every time he got up. Even today he's really out of sorts, except for the period when I gave him Tempra, so we'll try that before bed tonight so he can rest a little easier.

Trouble Stops With One, Trouble Starts With Another

Now that Roanen is only waking about once a night, we had to start having difficulties with something else. Yesterday morning Russ took the kids downstairs at about 6 AM, then called me down to take a look at Josey. His eyes and hands were really puffy and red, and he had red marks on his hands and legs. We called Telehealth and described him, and the nurse told us to go straight to the hospital (which they do an awful lot so I wasn't too concerned...). By the time he got to see a doctor, about an hour later, his eyes were puffed about halfway closed, his marks were redder, he had massive amounts of hives on his hips, bum, legs, arms and feet on top of the original marks, and his hands were starting to really itch. We were told it was an allergy, given some Benadryl and sent home with no further instructions other than to give him the medication every 4 hours. Wow, thanks for all the info! The Benadryl helped to a point, but as soon as it started getting close to the time for another dose, he would break out badly all over again. We were up half the night trying to figure out what it could be. He hadn't been anywhere, eaten anything, or come into contact with anything even remotely different, so we couldn't imagine what he could be reacting to. This morning his face ended up looking chapped and red and I took him in to the doctor's office to see if I could book an appointment for him, since I'd prefer not to be dosing him with allergy medication every 4 hours for the rest of his life. I made an appointment for 3 pm, then headed into Ottawa, giving him a dose on the way. His hives and marks gradually got better over the course of the day, even when it was time for more medicine, so by the time we got to his appointment his face was totally clear, and he only had a couple of marks on his hands. I was told to keep track of what he eats when he has this reaction, and that it could just go away on its own, yadda yadda yadda. Use the Benadryl to control it and it won't cause any problems, etc. Within half an hour of getting home his hives started to come back, so whatever is causing it is something in this house. We'll probably have to do a major cleaning this weekend to try to eliminate whatever it is, and watch it from there.