May 14, 2006

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

I love Mother's Day. I slept until 9:30 and was peacefully awoken by a parade of children bringing me chocolate chip pancakes and fresh fruit for breakfast in bed. Timothy made me some poems and a card in school (which he's been excited about all week). Morgan made me a book with pictures he drew and also with some pictures I had sent in to school and also a bookmark and card. They were very cute. Jocelyn just stood with her brothers and looked cute.

When I was done eating Josh brought me my computer, so now I'm still in bed watching reruns of Roseanne! Plus, a special gift from the new baby - a few kicks this weekend!

I'm getting a belly already and have moved up to my size 12s for comfort. I don't think I'm going to be able to avoid maternity clothes much longer. The heartbeat is getting a little easier to find though it still takes me a bit - mostly because baby is shifting around now instead of being in the same general spot each time.

Josh and I went in to meet with Morgan's consultant this week and got to see Morgan while we were at his school. He was so happy to see us! He was happy any way, but then got a big smile when he saw us and sat at the table between us quietly while we chatted with the consultant. Jocelyn was playing behind us and a couple other little boys came in and out and said hi to her while we were there, which she enjoyed.

It's been raining all weekend so I haven't gotten to work in the garden at all. I swear it'll be September before I finish pulling everything up. The front lawn is looking quite nice and the back yard, well, it could be worse.

I guess that's about it - not much to report this week. Next week Jocelyn has her 15 month appt so we'll see how much she's grown. I finally had to retire her 6-12 month clothes, so I at least know she's getting taller. 

May 6, 2006

Fun week this week! Timothy got his front tooth knocked out at karate, which he was very happy about and said that it was about the greatest day of his life. Of course, he says that every day.

The thing was barely hanging on so I can't imagine he got hit very hard. The tooth that is coming in behind it is as big as 2 previous teeth, so this should get interesting!

Being the tooth fairy is not as hard as I imagined it - at least not with my kids! They sleep like logs!! Timothy likes to bury the tooth way under his pillow so that I really have to root around for it, but he still didn't wake up. Then he had a field trip to the butterfly conservatory in MA on Friday, which he said was about the greatest day of his life. I guess a butterfly landed on his arm, which he enjoyed.

Morgan had a great week too - here are a few quotes from the notes his teacher sends home each day:

"Fantastic day. Morgan went to the cafe with his kindergarten and got to have juice and a cookie. He stood in line, ordered, got a napkin, sat with friends, and loved the numbers at each table."

"Morgan had an amazing day!!! He attended the ACES assembly, sang and followed all his friends. He walked with his class and loved it!"

"Morgan had another great day! He has done a fantastic job on his programs and we have moved on to some of the 1st grade curriculum."

Jocelyn keeps getting her foot stuck in her crib - doh! She doesn't seem to be learning very quickly as to how to avoid it - ah well. She still isn't really talking though I managed to coax a "hi" out of her this week (usually when I tell her to say hi she waves at me). She's got quite the runny nose this week and I have a feeling more teeth will be poking through soon.

I had a doctor’s appt this week and met my new doctor (on her very first day at this practice). I really liked her a lot - but right now she does not have rights at the hospital that is close to us, but only at the one in Hartford (or practically West Hartford). Josh is NOT willing to go there and wants me to change doctors. I told her I was unthrilled at the prospect and she said she'd talk to the head doctor about the plan for getting rights at other hospitals. So I'll ask her about that when I got back at the end of May and if she isn't going to get rights at Manchester I may need to change doctors. Kind of a bummer, but St. Francis is a 30 minute drive without traffic, and with traffic, well, it could be a while. Josh is concerned we wouldn't make it.

Everything else was fine - heard the heartbeat and had a bunch of blood taken.

Poor Josh has a head cold that looked like it was going in to his chest but then didn't. He's thinking it might be allergies because the kids are not sick and we don't usually get things first, but he's pretty miserable so it would almost be better to be a cold because then maybe it would get better. The pollen is pretty outrageous right now though, so who knows.

Oh yeah - I'm being published! I wrote an essay about my first encounter with math and it's being published in an actuarial magazine. They liked my writing and asked if I would do a book review some time this summer so I agreed. I get the book for free but the article is for free too. 

April 29, 2006

Footballin' Aliens 

by Timothy Lessard

When I got outside and looked up at the sky, I saw a weird flying plate. It was aliens inside!!! The aliens wanted to play football. So it was the humans against the aliens. Tim was the quarterback for the humans. Chipper was the quarterback for the aliens. It's the 4th quarter with the humans leading by 1, but the aliens took it out and won 50 to 39. Then, the humans all died from the aliens, except 1 named Dan. Then, he went on a drive through the woods and into a dumpster. 

April 29, 2006

I've got a cute story this week! So the other day Josh and I are sitting at the kitchen counter and notice that Jocelyn is crawling - very strange since she doesn't crawl any more hardly ever. She gets up and walks across the room but then halfway she stops and gets down and crawls again. I'm starting to think she's crazy! Just as she's getting to the edge of the room, she goes "woof woof!"

I screamed, "she's a puppy!" Isn't that the cutest thing ever?

Jocelyn had a play date with a co-worker's son who is one month younger than her. I guess she chased him around trying to touch him the whole time and he whined because he didn't want her poking him. Hee hee. His dad (also a SAHD) told him to enjoy it because it wasn't going to last long! I guess eventually he warmed up a little bit, though Jocelyn doesn't touch so much as poke, and usually in the eye, so it wasn't really his fault that he wasn't a fan!

Timothy has been going on his own down to various neighbor houses to play. It's made me seriously consider getting him one of those kid-cell phones (the kind that just has 4 programmable buttons and clips to your belt). Of course, the other way to go would be to actually collect neighbor phone numbers, but that sounds like a pain! We booked his birthday party for 6/3 and need to get a list of invitees together and think about getting invitations sent. We're going back to Chuck E. Cheese. We're thinking that Morgan might be able to handle coming along this year and may just take him and Jocelyn with us.

Morgan's had a good week, nice and uneventful.

I'm starting to feel much better and less bloated. I made it through a week without gaining any more weight· yay!

I guess that's about it for this week. I need to get out and rip up more of the garden today. It looks like a nice day so far. If I really get motivated maybe I'll even do some raking! 

April 23, 2006

There was a big (figurative) fire drill at work on Thursday and my boss was out (along with most of my peers) so it got to be me that handled it. It wasn't so bad except that meetings kept me there until 9pm without dinner and I had to spend some time deciding where in the room would be the best place to throw up if necessary - but luckily it didn't come to that. The drill continued on Friday but fortunately I was not invited to the 5:30pm meeting with the CEO and got to leave at 5. Actually, my boss who had called in periodically told me I was more than welcome to come since I had done all the work, but I was just as happy not to!

I found the baby's heartbeat with my home doppler thingy last week and again this morning, which was very exciting. My pants are definitely getting tight, but I think it has more to do with the fact that I haven't worked out or stopped eating in the last 7 weeks and have put on 6 Ibs now UGH. So I'm not really "showing" - I'm just getting fat again. I'm sure everyone at work is wondering if all the weight is going to come back - hee hee. My 10s still fit fine but feel tight at the end of the day, so Friday I actually wore a pair of 12s which were like balloon pants on me but by 4pm I was very thankful I had chosen them!

It's raining here. It started as a sprinkle yesterday morning around 9 but I headed out to a few tag sales any way. At the first one I got a foam chair set (that the kids spent the rest of the day fighting over) and a little tikes easel. When I got to the second one I was happily surprised that it was actually EIGHT houses of tag sales all in a row!! I got a big Lane cedar chest with a padded seat that needs to be refinished and is a little chewed on one corner for $15!! The same guy had a bureau and end table that were huge and in great shape for $25 that I seriously considered but they were just so darned ugly that I couldn't see past it. They went quickly though. In the rest of the neighborhood I got 2 doorway gates, 2 pairs of cleats, a vacuum (dirt devil), a bouncy seat and a wooden ride on toy for Jocelyn. The whole day cost me only $50 and my car was so packed that I had to come home instead of going to more! I was still in the shopping mood though, even though it was raining pretty good by now, so I came home, emptied the car, and headed to Target. Timothy needed pants and this week both the toaster and the coffee pot died. Of course I bought a few extra things while I was there!

The kids were off school this week so Josh is looking forward to Monday. Actually, he doesn't mind vacation weeks because it means he doesn't have to get up so early, so he at least gets a little more sleep. And really the kids pretty much entertain themselves most of the day. Although, Josh went grocery shopping yesterday and left me with the 3 kids and all Jocelyn wanted to do the whole time was climb on me. It was pretty cute though, so that was ok by me. She's a daddy's girl and really runs for Josh once he comes home and gives him big hugs.

I took out my 3 rubbermaid containers of maternity clothes last night and went through them all. Unfortunately (well, depends on how you look at it) the pants are all so ridiculously big that I couldn't possibly wear them this time around (at least not to work). So I sorted them into what I could get away with and what I couldn't. I'll suck it up on most of the shirts, but the pants just aren't do-able. So I had to order new work pants. For shorts I'm in an even weirder situation. I never bought any new shorts from when I lost weight, so I have all these size 16 shorts that actually will probably fit but may look a little odd. But I ordered this thing called a bella band that is a band of stretchy cotton that you put around regular clothes that are unbuttoned so that you can still wear them longer. Once I put those around my regular shorts, they looked a little silly but stayed on ok. So I only ordered a couple pairs of shorts for when I need to leave the house and else I'll just make do. But now the question is what to do with all these maternity clothes that are so big! There's no way they'd ever fit Elisabeth either so I can either offer them to a co-worker of mine that was about the same size, or I can donate them, or I can try to sell some of the nicer pieces and donate the rest. I think if I inventory them and donate them I'll probably get more in a tax deduction than I would trying to sell them, so maybe that's what I'll do.

Josh just took Timothy out to Border's to buy a dictionary (and I'm sure they'll buy some extra things while there). Jocelyn is down for a nap and Morgan is playing Super Monkey Ball.

It's interesting to watch Morgan start to read. He likes to write letters with chalk on the driveway, so I wrote the sentence "The mother said no" and he read it as "The mother said on". No is not one of his sight words but on is, so he deduced that must be it. The interesting part is that Timothy would have done the same thing. It's actually nice that they learn sight words these days instead of sounding things out, because for kids like Morgan (and Timothy for that matter), it really plays to the strength of memorization. Both boys could pretty much memorize anything - sort of like their mom, at least when I was younger.

Morgan's special ed teacher has also taught him all the sounds of the letters though, so he knows all those now and is working on the compound sounds like th, ch, etc.

Josh and I have taken a break from trying to agree on names for this baby. Poor kid may go nameless - maybe we can give him or her a symbol instead. 

April 22, 2006

Morgan's learned a new sentence. It's "Mommy read the book". Unfortunately - it's always the same book! Have you ever read Parts by Tedd Arnold? It is a cute book. I bought a bunch of others by him hoping I could mix it up a little, but so far no luck.

April 22, 2006

Jocelyn is EVERYWHERE. She's quite a climber. My boys were so much more cautious. She falls off things all the time because she climbs up things that aren't meant to be climbed on! But I look upon it as a good sign.

She's not talking much and I keep a careful eye on that, but she's playing games like patty-cake and holds up her hands to initiate it. She DESPERATELY wants to climb on Morgan, but he SO wants nothing to do with her. Sometimes she follows him around and does what he does. Unfortunately, she seems to have copied his tantrum routine! It's cuter on her though. She's a great baby though - she eats anything (Josh even fed her chopped liver!! She ate every new food we put in front of her at Passover) and she sleeps through the night. I can't complain.

Morgan has developed a "fake" laugh and when some of us are laughing he joins in even though he doesn't seem to know what's funny. I'm not sure whether it's great that he's trying to be included, or creepy because he has a fake laugh! He also said a word, I think it was guinea pig, that made my dad laugh and proceeded to say it periodically throughout my dad's visit but has not repeated it since. Odd!

Oh, Jocelyn is in a play group at the rec center and I got to take her before we went to Philly. She REALLY loves other kids! That was so nice to see. Mostly the kids are just into parallel play but she managed to go over to a 2 year old and get him to share his toy. They each ended up sitting next to each other and taking turns on the 1 toy with no intervention from the parents and with no talking by either of them. It was pretty cute.