Last Few Weeks!

Well, my time with just Eli is dwindling. I feel like I've got so much to do to get ready for this new little one to enter our world (and our ONE bedroom apartment!), but I'm still trying really hard to spend quality time with Eli. I can't believe our time together is coming to an end. Yes, yes, of course he'll still be here and of course we'll still have plenty of time together and I'll make sure to take him out on special Eli dates, etc.... but it for sure won't be the same! As a mom to one, I already have my attention divided 50 different ways and it's scary to think about how I'm going to divide my time ONE MORE way. I know we'll get into a routine and everything will be fine and even better than before....that there will be moments when Eli kisses or hugs his baby sister/brother and it makes every hard day disappear.... I just know that I'll miss the constant solo time with my little guy.

Yesterday I took him to Muscoot farm and he had the time of his life. The whole way there, he kept asking "FARM? Cows? Sheep? Pigs?" He was so excited. As soon as we got there, he took off running...for the tractor, the geese, the pig, the cows.... It was 80 degrees and super hard for me to keep up with my little sprinter, but I'm really glad we got to go there.

Tomorrow, my mom's coming up to spend memorial day weekend with us - yay! She'll babysit on Monday and then head back Tuesday. The next time she'll be up, it will be to see the new baby! I'm going to be working a lot this week, which is a total bummer... but necessary since I won't be getting paid for my maternity leave.

Ok - back to organizing!

Exhausted

So all of that craziness yesterday, plus Eli waking up at 6:20 this morning, has left me really tired. Still - Eli doesn't get the concept of "Mommy's tired," so out we went this morning. He was yelling and yelling to go to the playground and I felt bad since I kept him in all day yesterday.... so off we went. Maaaaan it's not easy for a 9 month pregnant mommy to keep up with a 2 year old at the playground! Especially with this new phase he's going through where he likes to throw his hat and glove and take off sprinting. He's imitating running around the bases which is super cute, but he is much faster than me. Today, he threw his bat in one direction, ball in the other and his glove and hat went flying. I had to make the decision to just leave everything where it was (in a playground full of kids who want to play with that stuff) and go after Eli, who had already made it all the way across the playground and up on the tall equipment (translation.... if he decides to try to climb down the ladder solo, he's toast) by the time I got to him. As he was climbing and climbing, I realized where he was heading - the tall curly slide. The tall curly slide that he can't yet do by himself cause he would for sure fall off/somersault down. So for your entertainment of the day, please picture a large bellied mommy trying to get down and put a 2 year old on her non-existent lap so that they can go down the tall curly slide together. I SO wish I had a videotape of that moment. Haha. Luckily, I steered him clear of the slide for the rest of our time there. I also think that from now on, playground time will have to be reserved til AFTER daddy gets home from work, cause I just can't keep up.

We also went to the dollar store, the post office, the library, and the grocery store - WHEW. Then it was time to fix lunch (seriously? can't I just sit down for a few minutes? lol). I tried again to give him chicken pieces (perdue-style) and a turkey sandwich, but he wouldn't touch either of them. My little vegetarian. I also tried giving him shredded carrots, which he played with, and shredded cabbage, which he actually put in his mouth before declaring "yucky, mommy... yucky."

Since we play baseball ("mommy hit it! Eli catcher! or... "Eli bat... mommy glove!") at least 2 hours a day in this house, I've finally gotten him to accept that mommy sits when batting or catching. He still repeatedly says "Mommy stand UP" but has seemed to accept that "no, mommy sits down when she's playing baseball."

He's been (knock on WOOOOOOOOD) napping for 3 hours (I know, right?????) for the last couple weeks, so let's hope that trend continues! I think it's cause he's been getting up early and is Mr. Nonstop action for the 5-6 hours before naptime.

Ok....off to tackle my list. Michelle and James are coming over tonight to make us dinner - I'm super excited!

Getting ready for baby!!!

Last time, I called all of this nesting. I get the concept, really I do... but this time I'm just calling it being realistic. The baby will be here in 3-4 weeks and I realized that if I don't start doing SOMETHING to prepare, then I'm going to be totally frustrated and unprepared when he/she comes.

Last night, Mike watched Eli while I sorted through and divided out all of the clothes. We're all sharing a one bedroom, so space is going to be pretty tight in there. There's only one closet in the room and it's Mike's, so Eli and the baby will be sharing his wardrobe and small dresser. Eli has an insane amount of clothes, so that means that the baby is relegated to a teeeeny portion of the wardrobe and 2 small dresser drawers. So I put all of the girls 0-3 and boys 0-3 stuff into one of the drawers.... and the neutral 0-3 in another. There were baby socks everywhere and I'll have to tackle matching them and putting them away another day. I have a great deal of pink baby mittens and hats, so if this kid is a boy, he's going to be sporting some of those for a while. Lol... I'm sure Mike will be thrilled about that.

I also cleaned up my side of the room (translation... I took all of the bags and boxes of stuff that doesn't and will never have a home and put them in the hallway) and opened up the pack n play. I now have approximately 6 inches of free space between my side of the bed and the pack n play. Lol. No more access to my drawers (we have trundle drawers). We're going to move the bed over so that I'll have more room, but I'm hesitant to do that yet cause it's really going to diminish our space. This pack n play, I remember, does not have a bassinet top, which will make it very difficult for me to bend over and pick the baby up..... (so Mom... in case you read this before I remember to talk to you... can you bring the pack n play with the bassinet part up here when you come next weekend?).

GLAD I made the decision to open up the crib... I read somewhere that to get Eli better adjusted, I should start putting out the baby stuff now. I can see why - ALLLLLLLL he wants to do is be in "that one crib!!!" It's giving us a good chance to talk about the baby and how things will be different when the baby is here.

I also ordered everything we need from Amazon (Eli is literally seconds away from crawling out of his crib and we decided to order the crib tent) and One Step Ahead (a new foam play mat since the cats have torn Eli's up, things to mount our furniture to the wall, a box to lock up all of the household cleaners)..... giving me more piece of mind for when Eli will be roaming when I'm taking care of the baby.

Today has been an amazingly productive day. After several weeks of waking up in the 5 or 6 hour, Eli slept in until 7:50am this morning! Woohoo! I guess I felt energized.... I read (skimmed) through 21 of my Parents magazines, packed away in a box along with the promise to "one day read these." (I have about 15 to go... i can do it, i can do it!). I sat with Eli and as I flipped pages, I pointed out the babies, elmo, etc.... which kept his attention for a while. Yay! Then I cleaned out everything from the fridge that didn't belong, made jello, made pumpkin muffins (Eli's obsessed with mini muffins cause he loves the book "If you give a moose a muffin").... and then Eli and I sat down to tackle the shredding. In a severe act of laziness, Mike and I toss our "to be shredded" papers in a box RIGHT NEXT TO the shredder. It's gotten SUPER out of hand lately and was waaay overflowing. I recruited Eli to help (best decision EVER) and the two of us spent an hour shredding stuff. It was the PERFECT activity to keep Eli busy.... there's no way for him to get his fingers in there and it automatically shuts off if you open the drawer... so he LOOOOOVED helping mommy put the papers in and watching them disappear. He had the time of his life. Lol. When we were done, he started roaming the apartment looking for "MORE MAIL! MORE MAIL!" that we could shred. (Don't worry, mom... it's off when we're not using it so he can't get into it).

Now he's down for a nap and I'm going to try to cross a few more things off my list of endless things to do.

Whew.

Eli's 2 year checkup

Quick post to say that Eli's 2 year checkup (i hate using hyphens...always have) went really well! Aside from the fact that he woke up at 4:30 screaming for 15 minutes to get into bed with us and then permanently at 5:30 and was super exhausted/cranky when it was time to see Dr. Grant...... he did pretty good! He didn't have to have any shots this time (YAAAAY!) and sat (relatively) still for his eye exam and his finger prick. He was OBSESSED with getting his bandaid off and with putting his pants back on. Seriously? How come he isn't so forcefully pro-pants when I'm TRYING to put them on. Sigh. She had to do her exam out of order so that we could get that kid's pants back on. Lol.... as soon as I did, the reason became clear - he wanted to get dressed so he could go back to the waiting room to play with the new trucks out there.

Anywho - she started out by having him point out pictures in a book to her.... he got all of them right and she was pleased. He's now 24lbs 14oz, which puts him in the 13th perentile! Huge jump for him, as he's been hanging out in the 5th-8th percentile for a while now. Height-wise, he was measuring in the 38th, but his chart was so up and down that the doc said "Well clearly, we're having issues on our end being accurate when we measure him, so this doesn't count."

She talked about the impossibility of disciplining a 2 year old and to only reserve time-outish type punishments or yelling for the really bad things, like hitting and biting other kids. She was talking about how, at two, they have absolutely no impulse control, and if they see something that they WANT to do, they just aren't able to stop themselves from doing it. TRUE that.

She was very impressed with his vocabulary and clarity of speech, saying by this age they want at least 50% of their words to be understood by someone other than mommy and he's way above that.... lol - I was thinking... really? you think he makes sense more than 50% of the time? hahaha.

She thinks we should go the crib tent route instead of getting a toddler bed, and I'm thinking the same thing... I just SOOOOOo do noooot want to deal with transitioning him to a "hey-i-can-get-up-whenever-i-want" bed three weeks before this new one comes along.

Sigh. On a GOOD note, we went to costco and picked up a bunch of paper products (plates, cups, bowls) so I won't have to do as much dishwashing when the new one arrives....as well as snacks and easy to make foods (easy mac, soup) for me. That very same day, I FINALLY forced myself to do laundry for the new baby....so now I have the 0-3 month baby girl, 0-3 month neutral and some of the 0-3 month baby boy (I can't find it! where did i put it?) clothes washed. Getting them folded and figuring out where the heck they will go is a different story. Figuring out how I will find the time to figure out where they go is another story. Figuring out how I'm going to figure out where they go when I'm too tired to figure anything out is a completely different story. :)

On that note... off to try to catch some zzzzzs.

Eli at two years old

I just posted about his birthday, but thought I'd take a minute (since I'm here and he's still napping!) to jot down the things he's been doing for the last few days.

-He still LOVES playing with Riley. He now likes to walk over and give her kisses. THANKFULLY, she's tolerant of this and sits there and lets him do it.

-Our new morning routine.... he's been getting up earlier (6:15ish - noooo) and stands up yelling MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! until I wake up. He tells me he wants to "Play! Play!" and "Watch Goofy Tennis???" and then tells me he's going to "Throw monkey!" and wants me to catch him. After our diaper change (which he usually cries through.... come on, we've been doing it EVERY DAY since you were born.... get over it! lol), we run out to "Feed the cats." Eli stands there and watches me open the can and always tells me "No touch. Finger." (meaning, he's not supposed to touch the kitty food with his fingers). His presence (he likes to be right up in the action) usually scares the cats away, but if they're brave enough to stay there and eat, Eli just stands there laughing and laughing, telling me over and over that they are eating. Then we either watch youtube videos of goofy playing either tennis, basketball or baseball.... or of the mother goose club (kids dressed up in ridiculous outfits singing nursery rhymes). It's amazing to me to think of how many videos he remembers and asks for.

-He started singing! He loves singing Twinkle Twinkle (he knows the whole thing...but most of the words are dodgy), Three Blind Mice and Old MacDonald. He also likes to put things on trays/bowls and carry them like a waiter, singing "Hot Cross Buns." Super cute.

-He loves to fix things and is constantly telling me he's fixing something. My mom got him a little toolbelt for his birthday - can't wait for him to see it!

-He LOVES playing with play doh and calls it the "blue one" or the "Red one." He doesn't really like to do anything other than smash little balls I've rolled up with his finger, saying "push" "push" each time. I only let him have one color out at a time, so we have a color out for about 20 seconds... then we put it back and get the next one.... then put it away and get the other one... etc etc etc. He likes to pretend he's going to put it in his mouth because he knows that he's not allowed to. He wants me to see that he's about to put it in and then takes it away. He does NOT like it when I make play doh snakes and immediately breaks them up into a million pieces.

-His counting is hysterical. One day, I was watching him count the rails on his crib.... this is what he said... "1, 2, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22." Lol. Amazing that he got them in order... I just love the randomness of it. Now, he consistently counts the same weird way.... "1, 2, 10, 9, 10, 8, 9, 11, 10!" This morning, he randomly added "and 42!!!!!" Hahaha.

-He loves it when I sing him the you are my sunshine song and made me sing it about 23 times in a row this morning.

-His new favorite thing to do is drop whatever he's holding and take off at a full sprint. This has made for some interesting moments for me outside. (imagine a 2 year old sprinting and a super pregnant mommy trying to catch him). Where is he headed, you ask? "ELI DUGOUT!" Lol. He's been watching a lot of baseball lately, and is now trying to copy the runners. We play baseball 30 million times a day inside, and now he always wants to be the batter (he used to always want to be the pitcher) so he can drop the bat, throw off his hat (???) and run as fast as he can all over the apartment. He wants me to yell out FIRST BASE....SECOND BASE.... etc... every time he stops... and he always slides somewhere and wants me to yell "SAFE!" Lol. When I'm the batter, no matter WHERE I hit it, he always yells "foul ball!" I can't argue... even if I KNOW it was a home run. :) He insists.

-The other night when we were eating dinner, he started rubbing his eye and then started crying. I looked over and couldn't see any of his eyelashes! WEIRD. They had like.... flipped inside. That's one you won't read about in the books. I finally got his eye to pry open and they all popped back out. Freaky.

-His new pair of shoes has velcro and he's learned how to unvelcro them. He always tells me "1,2, buckle shoe!" and wants me to recite the whole nursery rhyme. Once, he removed his shoe and through it in the grocery store. Lovely.

-He told me this morning that he wanted to kiss the baby and kissed my belly!! Super cute. Hopefully a sign of good brotherly things to come!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Eli!!!

I still can't believe my baby is TWO! TWO! We decided that since he's still a little guy and won't remember if we blow a fortune or not on his birthday, we'd opt to save money and just spend the day as a family - doing fun Eli things. Since Mike and I work opposite schedules, we never get to spend the day all together - so him taking off and spending the day with us was a special treat.

Eli woke up around 7:30 and we both sang happy birthday to him. He knows the Happy Birthday song and was excited that we were singing it to him this time. We came out to open a present or two... he opened Aunt Maureen's (sports coloring book, xylophone, farm animals book and stickers!) and was thrilled! I also rotated his toys out the night before, so he was excited to play with his "new" toys. Mike made Eli's favorite breakfast.... pancakes and corned beef hash, and we all ate breakfast together. After playing and reading for a bit, we got ready and headed out to the Intrepid Museum! (Aircraft carrier). We thought he'd LOVE it cause it was a huge boat with lots of planes/jets/helicopters... but the truth is, he just enjoyed being outside... and all of the little things, like playing with the ropes around the planes, riding in the elevator, walking up and down the stairs. He was VERY frustrated cause for each jet we came upon, "Eli drive it?!?!" wasn't happening. Once we got inside, however, there was a helicopter, boat, control room and jet that he could sit in and that made his day.

After the intrepid, we ate a little snack outside (it was a gooooorgeous day) by the water and then started our trek back to the train. On the way, exhausted Eli (we'd been there for nearly 3 hours) fell asleep in the stroller, so Mike and I decided to go out for lunch. We placed bets about when Eli would wake up... and I won.... cause I was 100% certain he'd wake up right when the food arrived. :) Luckily, he went back to sleep and stayed asleep for another hour. We decided to walk up to Central Park (lol...albeit super slowly... mom, we would have been perfect walking partners!) and when he woke up, we took him to see the horsies. (They line the street at the bottom of central park, waiting to take people on carriage rides). He was THRILLED and kept yelling with excitement.... he was especially excited to see the white horses, the ones "EATING, mommy! EATING!" and the ones with feathers on their headpieces ("YANKEE DOODLE!!!!!"). We walked around for a while and then decided to take him to the huge playground at the base of Central Park. I was thrilled to have Mike with me - an able-bodied 2 year old chaser. I sat and watched as my boys played in the huge sand pit, climbed walls, went down slides, ran through tunnels (Mike gets extra points for that one.... Eli took off and mike had to chase him through a tunnel designed for kids!), etc. To top off our day, we went to watch the end of a softball game in the park. (Eli is obseeeeeeeeessssssssssssed with baseball right now). We came home and had dinner... followed by cake and ice cream! We opened the rest of the presents, made a few calls, and then zonked out. I fell asleep on the couch as soon as we put Eli to bed.

It was a super fun birthday and I'm so grateful for the way it turned out. :)

Tired

Too tired for a real update.... Mike and I both got a stomach virus on Friday that wiped us out! I took today off from work, which was great cause I was exhausted from having eating nothing yesterday..... it was SO SO SO nice having a REAL saturday with my family!!! (I've worked Saturdays and Sundays for the past two years!)

Anywho... I just wanted to say this before I forgot....

I took Eli to the library the other day to return some things... and my son, right in the middle of the SILENT library filled with people yelled "MOMMY PEE PEE ON THE POTTY! MOMMY PEE PEE ON THE POTTY!" It was lovely. I wasn't even embarassed.... lol... I thought it was hysterical. :)

Tomorrow's mother's day! Woohoo!! And next week is Eli's 2nd birthday! I can't believe it!

35 weeks down, 5 to go!