I was home alone this week with a toddler so I took a Mommy Vacation and packed up to head to Chicago for 2 days to hang out with a good friend of mine and her kids. I’ll post on the pregnancy update later, but to wet your pallete, here are some photos of me, my sidekick, and my leech in Chicago
Baby is:
I am:
Oh, the memories:
What the hell:
It takes a strong woman to be pregnant. It’s a lot of physical and emotional changes and you’re supposed to walk around for 9 months pretending to be happy about it all. Most days I am because I can keep my mind on the end goal here, but yesterday I hit the wall. On Tuesday night I was up all night learning a valuable lesson in generic Tums. I finally got comfortable downstairs in the recliner when through the monitor came a tiny voice from the house 2 year old calling for me and crying. I went up to check on him and he just wanted to cuddle with me. I tried the rocking chair and he wouldn’t fall back asleep so a few hours after attempting, I tried to lay in his bed with him but it made me sick. So I put him in our bed hoping that Daddy could do the trick but he was apparently knew the difference between generic Mommy and the real boobs. I did what any mom would do: I laid in bed with my little man so that he would sleep, even though I then spent all night sick. Somewhere in there the acid reflux started turning into an upset stomach and I got out of bed Wednesday with the stomach bug that’s plagued my house. So yesterday I’m bound to the recliner all day on a liquid diet and trying not to move. It just kept getting worse and by bedtime I was laying on the floor in the hall outside of Lucas’ room with a pinched nerve and pain that was taking my breath away. Cue hormonal tears. I’m over it. I don’t want to share my body anymore. I’m tired, I want to sleep on my back, I want to go an hour without having to pee, I want to wear my old clothes again, I could use a glass of wine after a bad day, I hate the taste of Tums, but more than anything I just wanted to be able to get off of the floor on my own and I couldn’t. Third trimester greeted me with a big, open-palmed, slap in the face and I’m calling bullshit on the whole thing. Pregnancy sucks.
Prior to this string of bad days, I’m happy to report that I have nearly nested the guest bedroom into the perfect nursery. It’s adorable, and I just like to take a peak in it every now and then to remind myself that in a few short weeks there’s going to be a tiny human in there. Let’s pause for a minute to remind ourselves how ridiculous it is that a 5 pound human has his own room. I don’t even have my own bedroom. But I digress…
Here’s a sneak peak at what I’ve got going on:
Lucas is now in a big boy bed:
And he’s sacrificed his crib mattress for his little brother’s room:
His little brother’s room, by the way, now has a dresser and closet full of clean baby clothes, and I’m starting to slowly unpack the stuff in the basement. This Momma is starting to feel better about the nesting and getting ready for baby.
Just in time to get sick and be bitch slapped by third trimester symptoms.
Sigh…
This is the bump photo that you get this week. You’ll get another tomorrow at 27 weeks, so don’t be shocked when it looks, well, the same size. It took me a week to be both home and showered at the same time and the thought of 5 extra minutes to write on a chalk board and set up my camera is daunting. So this week lets all just agree to let Baby Boy take a backseat to his brother Lucas since we operate under “no man left behind” in this family.
Lucas is on the bounch back. I’ve never been so content with my toddler getting on my nerves.
I’ll post more tomorrow. I just don’t have the energy to tell you about all of the things I’ve been doing when all I can see in the house around me is the evidence of things that have been neglected.
But we’re all happy and healthy again and hats the important part.
There’s a quote that being a parent is to forever learn how to let your heart walk around outside of your body. That’s never felt more true than these last few days when Lucas has been sick and we couldn’t do anything but watch him get worse.
This post comes to you via my phone on the pediatric floor of Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo.
A stomach bug knocked Lucas down and the resulting dehydration delivered the match-winning blow to the house 2 year old. This morning I threw in the towel and took him to the pediatrician who sent him over for some lab work. When the results came in this afternoon I got the phone call that no Mom wants to hear: “the lab results indicate dehydration and he needs to go to the ER for fluids.” We hoped for a long evening before returning to our own beds for the night, but when we got here and they hooked him up to fluids they reran the tests. The doctor ultimately decided that he was getting worse at a rate that he wasn’t going to catch up from on his own with nighttime approaching and it was best for the little man to get some more serious IV fluids throughout the night.
The first good feeling came when Lucas became coherent enough to realize that he had and IV and tags that he didn’t want.
The second good feeling came when he didn’t want Mom and Dad to leave his sight.
This week’s maternity post is on hiatus until all members of our family are able to sleep in their own beds. I haven’t slept much the last few days which would probably be a stretch from my daily naps reappearing, but don’t ever underestimate what a Mom can do when it comes to her worry of her children.
Baby is:
I am:
Oh, the memories:
What the hell:
My Mom comes tomorrow and my need to nest is greater than my need to make sure she enjoys her trip. I’ve planned her to do list practically down to the minute and then accomplished most of it myself. She’s dangerously close to losing her mattress to the house 2 year old, who is dangerously close to losing his mattress to the baby who is in my belly not sleeping. Angel convinced me to wait to assemble the crib and start setting up the room until after she leaves so if you’re reading this Mom: you can thank him for not sleeping on a futon this weekend, but I can’t promise that you won’t be sleeping on one by the end of the weekend.
Must. Nest. Now. My house has been cleaned and the laundry has been washed and put away and I feel like I’m living in a dirt pile of laundry and housework. The stress of it makes me want to vomit into my Pinterest-worthy nursery crafts.
I have 14 weeks left, which is 3 months. ONLY 3 MONTHS. I’m 6 months into growing a tiny human (who still doesn’t have a name, room, or understanding big brother). I’m pretty sure that by this point with Lucas I was taking naps in the perfectly assembled nursery staring at piles of clean baby clothes. Right now I’m just hoping that the baby stuff we do have hasn’t been lost to the mice in the basement last winter. I wouldn’t know because I haven’t gone down to touch a single box, I’m just trusting that I washed it all appropriately and stored it in water-tight containers 6 inches off of the ground and away from the snow-melt flooded corner. I know 90% of this to not be true.
I’ve kept up with the gym. I go to water aerobics and yoga each once a week and then spend an hour walking around the track twice a week. I feel like a super hero until I see my reflection in the glass and am reminded that I’m a pregnant super hero who is really tired and maybe wobbling a little bit. I’m craving everything sugar and refuse to gain 600 pounds, let that be my motivation to get off of the couch and trade my toddler in for an hour of gym shoes.
I have a crazy busy day tomorrow that starts with the lovely glucose tolerance test but ends with picking up my Mama from the airport. I think I have a yoga class, play date, and (hopefully) nap to fit into the middle somewhere. But if my pregnancy brain serves me correctly, I felt like absolute poop following the epic sugar crash from my test with Lucas. So chances are I’ll finish the test, vomit, feel like passing out, and then eventually settle for laying on the couch a little green around the gills having not accomplished a single thing.
I’ve eaten a box and a half of macaroni and cheese while I wrote this, and am going to spend the rest of my evening wondering why I thought that was a good idea. Enjoy your evening, everyone!
Baby is:
I am:
Oh, the memories:
What the hell:
This week I’ve hit a major milestone in pregnancy: I’m 24 weeks. Baby now has a shot in hell at survival should something happen and I have to deliver. A baby at 24 weeks is nothing to write home about, but the thought that the odds only improve here makes me think that I should maybe get around to unpacking that crib and assemble it. And by “me” I mean “Angel” (are you reading this? I’m putting it on the blog so you HAVE to do it now).
Naming is so hard this time. We used both boy names that we liked on Lucas and now there’s a lot of veto’s flying around. At this rate, he will be born with no middle name and have to explain why for the rest of his life.
I still don’t think that Lucas understands that he’s going to be a big brother but I could be wrong. Last night he was sitting next to me on the couch and pointed at his belly and said “baby brother.” Swing and a miss. I took out the infant car seat so that I could sew a blanket cover for it and Lucas is suddenly very concerned about the car seat situation. He likes to go in the guest room where it is and tell me that “Lucas fix the car seat.” It’s nice of him to fix the car seat for me, though we aren’t sure what needed fixing. I try to tell him that it’s for his brother and he tells me that his car seat is in the silver car. So maybe he is understanding that there’s a baby coming? But either way, there’s no way he knows what’s about to happen to his world when he has to share mom. He’s a huuuuuugggeee Mama’s boy right now. Dad isn’t even allowed to give him hugs or pick him up. Soak it up kid, you’re not going to have a choice in a few short weeks.
I went to the doctor this week and was told I’ve only gained 14 pounds so far. She seemed really pleased with that and told me that I could keep doing what I’m doing. I didn’t want to tell her that what I’ve been doing is eating skittles from Costco, ice cream cones by the box, and giving into every single pregnancy craving that I’ve had. Lucas has really appreciated my pregnancy cravings because Mom always shares… Maybe that’s why he’s such a Mama’s boy right now? My c section gets scheduled in a few weeks and that’s when I start going to the doctor every other week. I CANNOT believe that I’m already at this point in the pregnancy. I mean, I just announced that we’re expecting to the world and here I am telling you that I’m about to round third base.
In other related news, this is how I feel about pregnancy:
Baby is:
I am:
Oh, the memories:
What the hell:
Not to be outdone this week by his younger brother, I woke Lucas up the other morning and the very first thing he said to me is “Mama’s pretty!” I almost cried. Can a mom have favorites? Lucas certainly thinks so.
This week I’ve started my two prenatal classes. Home girl is over here on track to gain 600 pounds this pregnancy, so Angel supported me to sign up for a water aerobics and a yoga class. Have you ever seen a pool full of pregnant ladies swimming with pool noddles? It’s a sight because none of us can move on dry land, let alone in a pool. I loved it. So glad that I found something to get me off of the couch and moving that’s safe.
Today is the first sunny day in the 60’s so to celebrate the (hopeful) end of winter I busted an old Taste of Home magazine out of the pantry from last summer and am making dinners out of it this week. Tonight we are grilling steaks with a pasta salad and tomorrow we’re doing BBQ chicken sliders. Warm is a state of mind when you’re living in Michigan because it is always cold. Always. I’ll post the recipes if they’re good for anyone else who would like to mentally defrost as well.
That’s it for pregnancy this week. Baby is still kicking, I’m still getting fat, and Angel is still taking all of my pregnancy neurosis like a champ. 23 down, 16 to go.
Crazy!
Poor second baby. I call this post 22 weeks, but I’m nearly a week late. Let’s use our imagination, shall we?
Baby is:
I am:
Oh, the memories:
What the hell:
I suppose this is the best time to tell you how this little adventure began. We were in San Diego for my best friend’s wedding and I suspected that my alcohol consumption was about to be hindered so I took a pregnancy test before heading to the rehearsal but then totally forgot about it (poor second baby. I forgot about him before I knew about him). So when I came back later to see a faint second line, I was the person who wasn’t sure if it was real or because it had been sitting there all morning. To eliminate the confusion we stopped at the store on our way to the venue for digital tests. I had just chugged a bunch of water since I was running around so it came back “-NO” and I cautiously enjoyed adult beverages for the weekend. The morning after the wedding Lucas woke me up on east coast time so while I was half asleep watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and packing to drive up to Disneyland I took the second digital test and did a double take when it said “+YES”. So I woke up Angel with my pee (true love), and he looked at Lucas and said “You have 9 months to get out of diapers.” and now here we are, 22 weeks into it.
Keeping pregnancy a secret through first trimester is like trying to function normally with the flu that you can’t tell anyone you have. Pair that with holiday parties and I looked like a total alcoholic to my friends here. I kept saying that I wasn’t drinking because I was so hung over from the night before which explained the look on my face, running to the bathroom, and volunteering to be DD. No friends, I wasn’t really hung over every day of December. That would have been more fun.
Hormones, y’all. When they woke me up at 2am to go to the bathroom and then watch infomercials, around 4am I found myself crying into a jar of pickles.
Over watching Toy Story.
I’m so pregnant.
It’s been hard for me to not be posting about this pregnancy like I did the last one, but now we’re happy to finally announce that our family is growing this summer by two feet!
To answer the generic questions: I feel fine now but the holidays were largely spent in the bathroom NOT enjoying the food and drinks. I’m already the size of a house, and if movements in the belly are any indicator of what I have in store in a few months, wine is no longer going to take the edge off of motherhood.
So let the games begin! Three’s a crowd, but four’s a party!
Hi again. Forget about me? I sure feel like some days I’ve forgotten about myself, but as long as everyone gets fed and to bed in clean pajamas I’ll consider most days a success.
We’ve been doing so much up in the mitten that I don’t even know where to start. This fall we did a lot (A LOT) of traveling. Nothing reminds me how much I dislike living in a grey, cold, snow like visiting somewhere that requires sunglasses instead of boots.
In September we drove to Niagara Falls in Canada (aye) with our friends and their kids. Once you see the giant hole in the ground and take a few pictures there’s not much to do so we spent the rest of the weekend at the local vineyards because when in Canada, do as the Canadians do, aye?
In October, we took our adorable munchkin to New York City for my first trip to the Big Apple. I was a ball of excitement and smiles because I hear so much about New York but never had the opportunity to go so when Angel’s Aunt and Uncle offered to take us I didn’t even have to think- YES YES YES! I love my husband, kid, and dog, but if I went to NYC for the first time before I had them all I probably would have tried to move there. Love that city but it is NOT conducive to strollers and toddlers who don’t understand that they can’t cross the street yet and you can’t carry them 80 blocks. What an awesome way to spend our 4th wedding anniversary, though!
About a week after we got home from the East Coast, we decided to make sure that the Pacific Coast was still there. So we up and went to San Diego for my best friend’s wedding! I was the Maid of Honor and Lucas was the ring bearer and it was so much fun. We stayed in a condo on the beach in Carlsbad and got to enjoy coffee on the porch in the sun and dip our toes into the ocean and put Lucas in shorts and remember all of the reasons why I really belong on the West Coast. Angel had to walk down the side of the aisle with Lucas carrying a bag of M&Ms, feeding them to Lucas so he would walk down without freaking out. I’m not sure he saw anything other than the candy that Daddy was carrying, which was perfect. Erica got married on a beautiful golf course looking over the ocean and I was able to keep myself together ALL weekend leading up to it and all of the events and ceremony so that I could make sure she did what she needed to with a fluffed dress for photos and all. Then naturally, as the DJ gave me the mic at the reception to give my speech I instantly started crying and couldn’t remember a single word of my memorized speech. All I could think of was Wedding Crashers and the guys in there betting on the Maid of Honor crying for her speech. Well, I totally did but all that I can say about it is that it all was genuine.
This brings us to 2 days before our favorite Little Man’s second birthday. And what do you give a kid when you’re in Southern California and he looooves Mickey Mouse? Yeah, it was a tough one for us to figure out, too. Luckily, it looks like we were able to guess correctly when we picked a trip to Disneyland:
Yeah, in that photo we’re waiting in line to get in and he’s that excited. We’ll go ahead and accept our award for Parents of the Year now.
So we spent 2 days at Disneyland and California Adventure, including Lucas’ 2nd Birthday. What an awesome thing to be able to do for your kid, seriously. I’m not sure who had more fun.
For Christmas we spent 2 weeks in Colorado with my parents. It was a long drive there and back, but it was nice to be able to see that sun and snow actually can coexist. Who would have guessed? Lucas got the hang of opening presents and still tells me that “Santa’s coming” so I think he sort of understood the concept this year. He was excited to see Nana and Paws and meet his cousin “Witty” (William). If it wasn’t for a bout of croup on Christmas Eve, it would have been the perfect trip. But then what’s a family holiday without a trip to Urgent Care? All in a day’s work.
Now we’re home for the next few weeks before another trip to the Caribbean. Best way to spend the winter is not here, I always say.
On to another year for the Rivas Family!
What Lies Within 