Deep Thoughts - 3 - first baby one liners

So we told Rece he was going to be a Big Brother in FL about 2 minutes before we told our parents. He talks constantly so we knew he would spill the beans if he knew sooner. So we had him color some pictures for the Grandma's and inside of the envelopes was a picture of my 9 week ultrasound.

We told him about the baby and he basically said "No that's not a good idea" - Great start... lol.

But once we gave him some work to do - ie telling all the Grandparents he was going to be a Big Brother, he got into it and played the role well. And then over the Thanksgiving weekend came the first of the one liners from him about the baby:

"Mom, how'd that baby get in your belly - you eat it?"

"When that baby pops out!" While he flings his hands in the air.

"When the baby comes I can't wear diapers anymore" - I love this idea and he was not prompted...

Pregnancy - Ver. 2

If you are reading this post it is after Thanksgiving when we have told our families that we are expecting little Relli #2!


I have been wanting to keep kind of a running log of my second pregnancy to post after we announce it, but I have been so icky feeling and at the same time been so busy with travel from work that I have had no ambition. So anyway, it is November 13th and I am finally starting to feel at least a little better and so I will now try to recall what has happened the last couple of months.


We planned on trying for a summer baby this time as the first time around Rece was born at the beginning of baseball season and it made for a struggle throughout my maternity leave. I would really like to have a different experience this time around, with Jeremy being off all summer, I am hoping we get just that. My due date is June 15th, which is Jeremy's b-day! Although I don't put too much weight on that considering Rece came 3 weeks ahead of his due date.


So here I am - going on 10 weeks pregnant, here is what it has been like thus far:


Not the best.


That's right, I said it - I haven't enjoyed the first part of this pregnancy. I know that I will, and I feel bad saying it even, I loved my 2nd and 3rd trimesters with Rece, however this first trimester has been challenging for me.


I took my home pregnancy test on Wed October 5th, about 4 days ahead of when I should have been taking it. Although I knew I was pregnant the day before I took it, as I drank a frappe at lunch and about hurled it all over my desk. I also knew...this means trouble.... to be nauseous so early.


So as expected my test came back positive. Since I was taking it a few days earlier than planned (apparently they do work "5 days sooner") when I showed it to Jeremy before work that Wed morning he just said "Huh". Later I discovered that he didn't really believe me...or more clearly, he believed me but thought it might not be true because it was so early. So I took a couple more tests closer to the weekend - and I think it sunk in for both of us.


From the very beginning I was nauseous. It started where I was just nauseated during the day usually the worst between 10am - 3pm. Then week 5 came and I was nauseous 24/7. I woke up in the night nauseous. Riding in the car to work in the morning was absolutely miserable. I wasn't physically getting sick, I just felt like I was going to all day every day. This went on pretty constantly from weeks 5-9. I feel like it has gotten a little more manageable, I still have plenty of times where I feel like butt, but I also have times where I feel "okay" I wouldn't say I feel normal by any means. For one thing, I have to eat - all the time- or else I feel so sick I want to lie on the floor in the fetal position. It's like as soon as I get hungry the nausea intensifies so much that I can't possibly think about eating...which makes the sickness worse. So I have spent the weeks trying to stay ahead of this, and also not gain 20 pounds. I am so sick of eating. It's like I have to force myself to eat so I am not so sick. And of course, do all of the healthy foods I should be eating sound good??.... NO of course they don't. I also have a ton of food aversions this time around. I can't even fathom eating certain things right now. But again, I feel like that is starting to ease up just a bit.


Weird things I have experienced this pregnancy:

I have to eat an apple cinnamon nutri grain bar before getting out of bed.

I want to hurl if I try to drink anything other than water. Which is annoying since the best Starbucks holiday drinks are out.

I love bananas

I love bread and all things with bread on them

I want to hurl if I chew gum

I am forgetting everything, like my wallet on my desk after I have ordered food at the drive thru.

Laying on my sides at night makes me way more sick than laying on my back




Where am I now? Well my pants are getting tight already. Big shock since all I do is eat. We had our dating ultrasound on Friday the 11th and I measured only a couple of days ahead of my LMP due date. Interestingly this ultrasound was almost 2 weeks later than Rece's dating ultrasound and we could see little nub arms and legs this time around which was cute.

I am looking forward to feeling better and of course to having another baby in our family!

Rece - 30 months and then some

Can't believe that we will have a 3 year old in about 4 months....


Rece had a great summer, he turned two and a half and we celebrated with a big cup of fro-yo for his "half birthday" - he kept saying "but it's not my real birthday". True enough, mommy wanted fro-yo.


Things he loves right now:

- Baseball

- Football

-Michigan Marching Band - he plays a pretend tuba and marches around the living room to the tune of the Michigan fight song playing on the fridge magnet we have.

-Reading books, loves the Llama Llama books

-School - riding the tricycle, playing football with his pal Nick and being the boss of the toddler room since he is now the oldest one left. He will move to the pre-school room at 3.

-Shrek & Nemo

-Tractors

-Hot Wheels and all things with wheels

He is still a constant chatterbox and I love that we can have a conversation on the way home from school. He is getting into pretend a lot more now and has quite the imagination.

We are blessed that Rece is pretty even tempered. He does of course have his times of whining and has a mini-fit every once and a while but thus far we have avoided a lot of drama. He is very well behaved when we go out to eat or shopping, I think this is because since he was born I hauled him in and out of stores every weekend while we killed time while daddy was studying at home. So he is used to, and likes going to Target and Wegmans and the mall. Score.

Deep Thoughts - 2

Rece from the back seat of the car talking to us in the front : "Daddy do you remember when we saw that crash and the sirens"

I reply "Yes, I remember that"

Rece - giving me the 'You have to be kidding me mom" look - "I was asking Daddy"

_________________________________________________________________

While watching a DVD on the computer so daddy can watch the Tigers on TV:

Jeremy - "Rece get back from the TV, Rece - get back..."
Rece - "Daddy, this is the laptop." He walks around the corner and points "THAT is the TV"

Gotta love the toddler who thinks he is smarter than his parents at 2 and a half.

I'm Blig-Blogity Back!

I cannot believe how much of a giant slacker I have been on the blog. I need and want to get back into the grove....starting....now.

Well lets see, the last time I posted was in the spring, so I missed an entire season of the year in blogging. I think if I try and commit to actually writing posts on all of the things that we did this summer - it won't really happen and I will be defeated before I start - so instead here are some of the biggest things that come to mind - bullet style. Perhaps I will even write a post or two on a couple of them at some point.

Summer 2011 - In no particular order...
-Jeremy took two Masters classes during his summer break, both were demanding and drained a lot of our fun time this summer :-(

-BUT we did manage to take a vacation to Michigan around the end of June and 4th of July, where we got to see a few of our fave Michigan Buds that we miss so much!

-We went to HAWAII. Maui to be exact. My little brother got married to this totally awesome chick named Taylor ;-) It was the most beautiful wedding I have ever been to. Even with this really weird emotional lady who did a reading at the ceremony and barely held it together.

-Rece spend the week we were in Maui with Gma and Gpa Rellinger. He had the time of his life! He fished, swam, boated, played in the yard, skipped rocks etc etc.

-Rece turned 2 1/2! (promise separate post on this)

-I got a new camera

-We booked tickets to Disney World for Thanksgiving of this year!

-We painted our bedroom and a accent wall in our living room.

-Jeremy turned 34

-We got a water softener and a new dishwasher and it is amazing to see what clean dishes can really look like.

- Rece completely fell off the potty training wagon...boys will be boys

-We had new windows installed and they make the house look so different.

-We went to Michigan again a couple of weeks ago to celebrate Clint and Taylor again at their "back home" reception - Rece got the stomach flu while we were there, but Thanks to Gma and Gpa R we were still able to go and have a great time.

New Pictures for spring!

Rece had his pictures taken about a week ago - and as always Heidi did an AWESOME job. I can't belive how big he is getting.

Click HERE to see the preview...

Rece at 26 months

O...M...G
This kid is something else. Every day he surprises me with something new. Something he says, something he knows, something he does. He is smart. Really stinking smart. Scary smart. Like smarter than us soon, smart.

Some of my fave Rece facts at 26 months:
- He knows his ABC's, his colors, his shapes, can count to 20 in English (although he never says 15, I guess he isn't a fan of that number), to 10 in Spanish. He knows a few days of the week and in the correct order.

- He can sing twinkle twinkle, row your boat, rock a bye baby, baa baa black sheep and probably more.

- He has some of his favorite books memorized, as in he can recite 4, 5, 6 lines of text nearly word for word on the pages.

-He knows his first and last name and our first and last names as well -Speaking of names, his teacher said that Rece learns and remembers the names of every kid he comes in contact with at day-care. We knew that he could name all of his own class mates....and their parents.... but I about fell over in the hall way when he named all the kids by picture in the other toddler room, and the majority in the pre-school room....even 3 or 4 from the infant room. I wish I could remember names that well!

-He is Obsessed with baseball. The high school baseball field buts up to the daycare parking lot and he will stand in his classroom and watch the baseball players out the window any chance he gets. He and daddy play baseball in the living room all the time and he can whack the heck out of the ball off the tee.

-He likes to tell me which way to go in our neighborhood and then he will yell out "there is our house - I found it!"

- He is starting to "test" the limits. When we say "no climbing on the table" he puts his leg a little further up and then just looks at you to see what you will do next. I have a hard time not calling him a butthead and cracking up.

-He is aware of the concept of being "safe". I am hoping not too much, I don't want him scared all the time. But we have emphasized a number of things that are not safe and how to be safe. So for instance when we buckle him in he says "so I safe? so don't worry..." Or around getting his fingers pinched in the door he has said "I pinch my fingers? Is berry dangerous" There are many things he will tell us are "berry dangerous".

-His sweet tooth has arrived. For a kid who ate literally only yogurt bites as a treat until he was 2, he has acquired a taste for the finer things in life - Chocolate Chip Cookies....ice cream and glup....chocolate candy. He has had all of them in very small quantities. He would still take fruit over any of them, any day of the week. Otherwise, he has been eating and growing like a horse lately.

- He is full of crap. He makes up stories....or maybe it is more remembering things that happened once a while ago and then adding some things that make sense. But he likes to tell stories. Jeremy said the other day "He is so you" and I can't help but agree, he is the next instigator in the making.... ;-)

E-mealz

Hi, my name is Chassidy and I am addicted to e-mealz. I found this through my friend Teri on Facebook. It is a dinner/menu planner. It gives you 5 meals to make for dinner each week and the shopping list to go with it. The shopping list is even divided by section in the grocery store!! The meals are really good, I would say we have enjoyed 90% of them and would make them again. There are several plans to choose from - we do low-fat for 2, which always leaves left overs for lunch the next day. I print the menu out on Sunday, get the groceries and we have dinner planned for the week! And it got us out of the rut of eating the same ol same ol each and every week. I love e-mealz! www.e-mealz.com

The great payoff...

I just find it interesting that these are times when it is the "in thing" to pay off debt and free yourself from bills. I have noted over the last year or two how many more people publicize when they pay off a credit card or a loan. I couldn't have been happier to get a bonus this year and use it to pay things off. Jeremy's truck will be paid off in two more payments, and we may have a "no truck payment party". That payment is a beast, and I can't even imagine not having it, so before we get that money each month and have a chance to miss it, we will be diverting the exact amount toward the student loan payoff and savings. We have been living without that money each month for 48 months and we can continue to if it helps get rid of another payment! It IS something to be proud of, to live within your means and to strive toward being without debt. It's not easy, and it will be some time yet before we are just down to our mortgage, but we are working on it. And we could get there faster, I am spoiled. I drink Starbucks on the weekend and I do a little bit of shopping at Target and LOFT now and again and we are able to treat ourselves to dinner and vacations now and again.... But I put those things in the "work hard, play hard and the life is short" buckets, knowing if we needed to we could give them up. But for now - we will enjoy some of that while working towards the great payoff....

Are you kidding me?

Yep, you MUST be kidding me. I just called my doctor's office and told them I needed to come in because my tonsils were swollen again. I told the cliff notes version of how I went to urgent care a couple weeks ago for the same thing and that they gave me antibiotics which helped but now it is back. The scheduler said that because of the "screw-ups" they are seeing due to urgent care they are telling patients "if you started there - you have to finish there". Excuse me???? So I replied back - "if I had just called for an appointment and not mentioned urgent care - I would be fine? That doesn't seem fair to me" and "you are telling me they are so incompetent, and now you are going to send me back there?" She also told me "not to mention it to my doctor" when I come in. Really? Really? So I am not supposed to tell my Doctor what I was treated for/with? B.S.! Watch me.

2

Rece is 2! On his actual Birthday....he got slammed with some cough/cold/flu crap. Poor guy! He had something mild over the weekend, but then on Valentines Day, Monday he got hit by the truck of a virus. So bad so quick they did a chest x-ray again because I swear when this kid gets sick he always sounds like he has the pneu. Chest x-ray was negative but he was so sick they gave him a 5 day course of steroids...it helped some....but then he either got a new cold or the old one wasn't done because it came back. And yada yada yada....I THINK we are finally over it now - no less than 2 weeks later.


Anyway, we didn't celebrate too much that day which made me sad, but we did give him a few gifts from us so that he could play with them when he was home from school over the next couple of days. He liked the opening and of course the playing with the presents.


The following weekend we planned a celebration with all of the grandparents who came in from Michigan. He was feeling much better (compared to Monday at least) and we did it up with Balloons, Cupcakes and a cookie cake made and decorated by my Mom. As you can see by the pictures below it was a combo of Thomas the Train and the "Cars" movie. We decorated and got things set up while he was napping and then when he came downstairs it was all a surprise for him. He could see the balloons and gifts from the top of the stairs and he said "Oh Wow!" then he basically directly to the biggest box and started tearing paper. He is such a lucky boy to have such a great family that loves him so much and spoils him with such neat toys and books and clothes!


We had a really good weekend. (I will spare you the story of the urgent care visit over the weekend and the follow up peds visit on the Monday following for another post)
And it was a crazy feeling to celebrate the little man turning 2. I think I enjoy him more every day. He is so smart, funny, and beautiful and I am proud that I am his mommy.

Before he was 2

In just a few weeks my little guy will be 2! I wanted to take a few minutes to capture all of the things that he is doing and enjoying now before we reach the milestone.

- He loves to talk and can now remember what he did at school and tell us about his day - including sometimes confessing to things like pushing or pinching someone.

-He has long since been speaking in complete sentences, and uses words and phrases like "I don't have any milk either?" "Mommy, Emma is silly" "That is awesome" "Oh! (as if surprised by something) Thank you Mommy!" "What's wrong? Oh, you happy now" "I have to tinkle in the potty".

-Speaking of potty, randomly he will tell us that he has to go and he has a few times, other times we have been slow to get the seat set up and he will go in his diaper. Most days he doesn't give it a second thought.

-He loves trains, loves loves loves! And he has several of the Wooden Thomas Railway collection. He is also a big "Cars" fan and right now his obsession is a metal John Deere tractor.

- He has gotten very into coloring pictures, we have his little tikes picnic table inside and we keep it in the upstairs living room and usually when we are working in the kitchen he is busy working on a piece of art.

-He still loves books. We just added Llama, llama, red pjama to the bed time routine.

-He has started calling this baby doll we have "baby seeester" I did not tell him to say this....but I think it is super cute.

-His fave foods right now are - Chicken, cheese, grapes, any kind of berry, whole apples so he can take bites like a big boy, pickles and eggs with cheese and sausage. When we take him out to dinner we give him 2 or 3 choices and he chooses for himself and eats it! Including a plate of broccoli just a couple of weeks ago.

-He likes to sing and do Yoga. I can take very little (no) credit for the lader. They do Yoga at his preschool and the posses he can hold are quite amazing and too funny. As for songs, he will bust out the ABC's, Bob the Builder, Twinkle Twinkle, etc at the most random times.

- Once and a while he busts out with a "Love you". The other day when we were driving home from school I asked him "Rece, do you love daddy?" He smiled and said "Yeah" then I said "Rece do you love Emma?" He smiled again and said "Yeah" . Then I asked "Rece do you love Mommy" and He said - "I want to go to the car wash"

The kid cracks.me.up. And I love that. Love you little monkey man.

Christmas and New Years 2010

Wow - super duper behind on blogging....I am sure the 2 readers that I have, have long sense stopped checking for updates. But I will update none the less.

Our Holidays were great! I was so excited for Rece's 2nd Christmas - I think I had visions of him opening each and every gift and oohhhhhing and ahhhhhing and giving everyone big hugs and kisses of Thanks. So it didn't happen exactly like that....but he really did enjoy the whole opening of gifts thing this year and with each and every box that he unwrapped he would say "open it" so that toy had to be opened right then so he could check out what was inside.

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day in Jackson at my parents and then headed to Mt. Pleasant the day after Christmas for Christmas with Jeremy's parents. We also had the opportunity to see some friends as well, which was great. On Christmas Eve we went to the 5pm Children's Mass. Rece started off mass with "Wow and ohhhhhh" when they started singing the opening hymn. But by 5 minutes into the actual mass he said (loudly) - "I go home now?" . Overall he was pretty good, Jeremy took him out into the family/welcome area about 2/3rds through the mass because he was too fidgety to stay in the pew.

Christmas Day we got up and opened gifts and then celebrated with the whole Dawson family at my parents house. Although it is crazy, because there were like 40 people there, it is such a cool way to spend Christmas Day, with family - near and far. Rece liked playing with all of his little second cousins. So many babies now, it is so much fun.

When we got up to the lake the weather wasn't quite as cold so Rece got to build a snowman with Gma, Gpa and Josh. He loved that. We also got to see all of his Great Grandma's on the trip. We had been showing him pictures so he would know their names and he did, he did great. He really has never had "stranger danger" shyness, maybe a good thing, maybe not...who knows.

One funny story: on our way from Jackson to Mt. Pleasant we stopped at the Lake Lansing Road Mejier. In the middle of a busy isle Rece folds his hands in the shopping cart and yells out "Thank you Jesus!!" - he was praying. We had to pick ourselves up off the floor of the beer and wine isle....(cough) I mean the cereal isle from laughing so hard. No idea why he busted out the lunch prayer in the middle of meijer, but I am pretty sure people thought he was an angel child.

Anyway, we stayed in Michigan through the new year this year which was also nice - I actually saw mid-night this year. First time in three years I think. Some pictures below of our great 2010 Christmas:











Yoga Master...

2011 Bucket List

I am stealing this term from my future SIL Taylor. I was thinking about my 2011 goals and she mentioned she too had a "2011 Bucket List", and well lets face it - it sounds more fun than "Goals". :-)

So here it is, in no particular order and I reserve the right to add at any time, oh and the one that is * out is confidential ;-)

1. Workout and improve my fitness and energy level! And feel good about wearing a swimsuit by the time Clint and Taylor's Maui Wedding comes around in August!

2. Fund raise and walk in an Avon 2 Day Breast Cancer Walk (debating between Chicago and DC walks)

3. Read 12 books

4. Go on at least 12 dates with my husband

5. ***********