Edrington/Tillery visit

Aunt Gee Gee, Jami, Trey and Jayden come to visit from Baltimore. They arrived at 8am or so and we chatted it up until about 10:30am and then we hopped in our car to go to the Children's museum. Thirty minutes later we finally left our side street parking spots because poor Jami got stuck on the ice (apparently Philadelphia gets such little annual snowfall that they let mother nature deal with it as opposed to plowing). We had a great time at the museum but out of fear of getting stuck again Jami and Aunt Gee Gee decided to leave a bit early as opposed to coming back to our place. I don't blame them!

Trey and Dave hold Mia's hands. Mia is normally pretty independent about not wanting too much help or hugs but she seemed to really thrive on this extra attention from her older cousins and they got some good Mia lovin' in.

Jayden, Trey and Mia waiting in line for the "pony ride"

Jayden declined being on a pony because he wanted to be closer to Mia. . . so sweet!

Jami with the 3 cousins on a cow in fairy tale land.

Mia takes her great Aunt Gee Gee for a ride in the car (Mia got the front seat)

Snow Day!

What do you do with a snow day and a little girl with a cold?

You bring the snow inside!

Here is Mia's granola hat. Is she putting it on or taking it off? The secret is mine!

Here is Mia utterly amazed by the word daddy just put up on her magnetic board

Painting, one of Mia's favorite pastimes

When asked what she was drawing here Mia said, "lollipops" and then she proceeded to tell us that the yellow one was hers, the green one was daddy's, the blue one was mommy's and the red one is Gavin's lollipop. Sometimes she calls him baby Gavin though, which is too cute.

We had a nice day of fun. The three of us kept busy and even napped a bit all while staying warm.

prenatal appointment

picture taken at 24 weeks pregnany

Prenatal appointment (at 25 wks gestation)

I did it! I finally gained a sizable amount of weight :) I am now 127.8 lbs, which is 6 lbs since last month's appointment and about 10 lbs (give or take, I don't know my exact pre-pregnancy weight) since before I got pregnant. When I checked my old blogs with Mia this isn't too far off. Before, at 25 weeks I was 14 pounds heavier than my pre-pregnancy weight. Although I had fallen off the wagon I am proud to say that I am regularly doing my prenatal pilates/yoga dvds again.

Stats:

my fundus is measuring 25 cm, my blood pressure is 116/66 and my pulse is 72 bpm

Gavin's heart rate is 150 bpm and he weighs about 1.25 lbs.

Supposedly my blood volume is about to reach its peak (50% more than it used to be) so I'm going to try to get an iron supplement my midwife recommends and be mindful of my protein, Omega and water intake. I've been keeping a food/exercise journal and I think that helps.

Next up: we rescheduled our glucose exam for 2/17 as per my midwifes suggestion, we will also get my iron levels tested at that time. My next prenatal appt with Christy is 2/24/11 after that we will be meeting more frequently because I will officially be in my 3rd trimester.

Only 100 more days left until our due date!

Big Girl Undies

I am proud to announce that Mia has been doing very well with her potty training. She has had several days with no accidents and so I decided (because we were going commando at first) it was time she got to pick out her own first "big girl undies". Another big help was that she started being more agreeable if we insisted that she try going pee pee before going out in public. This made outings much less scary.

Mia chose the Hello Kittie undies you see below. We are still doing diapers at naptime and nighttime for now. But after trying on my panties 2 days in a row I figured this was a good sign she wanted her own.

Look at how proud she is:

2 years old

Mia and Randall shared yet another birthday together. If you asked Mia, "How old are you going to be Mia?" she would say, "I be two" and hold up her whole hand. Now she says, "I two". The party was held at an indoor playground in a warehouse in MA.

It was from 10am until about 12:30pm. We served bagels/fixins, fruit with yogurt and of course cupcakes (red velvet and vanilla).

Although we practiced blowing out the candles with our fancy shmancy dinner table candles, Mia fell off the bench just before the candle part of the party and was too upset to blow them out. In came Randall to the rescue blowing out not only his own candle but Mia's too.

I love the look of joy in their eyes as everyone sings happy birthday to them

wait, that's not joy. . . it looks more like terror!

What's going on, why is everyone looking at me?

Oh no, now there is fire involved, ack, what did I do to deserve this?

If that is what I need to endure to get a cupcake, I will do it all over again in a heartbeat!

Why are you still looking at me? Can't a man eat in peace?

The party started and finished with playing.

It was cute to see Mia playing with the dolls and pretend kitchen a lot while Randall hung out on the other side with the ride on toys and trains. But theyboth had a great time in the bounce house! Even Bubbe got in and bounced with them. After the party was naptime and then we had people over Matt's place for lazana while the kids opened some of their presents and played with them (we spaced out present opening across the weekend).

Mia and daddy take their tower building very seriously.

Mia sports her new skirt and tutu shirt, both of which she loves!

24 month updates*

Family

Mia was building with blocks and said she was going to make a house for the family ("home for fammy" were her exact words) and then she started listing us: mommy, daddy, Mia and Gavin :) and here I though she was clueless about becoming a big sister but she has been really big on talking about the concept of families lately and even includes Tio Harold, Uncle Matt and Randall.

New arrival

Little Joseph, a 16 month cutie comes and goes. He was dropped off at Matt and Harold's place during the week prior to the birthday party. He wasn't eating, wouldn't stop crying and had a terrible diaper rash. Within only the weekend I was there he went from a timid anxious boy to a happy go lucky toddler: laughing, playing, eating and getting into mischief. Sadly, he had to leave to go back to his mommy just shy of one week after they began fostering him. If he should ever find himself in need of a foster home again he will have the stability of Matt/Harold's home, which he now knows and loves. We miss him very much but wish he and his mom the best. Here is a picture of my mom reading a book to Randall and "Jofuss" as Mia still likes to call him:

popular words

Right now, Mia likes to say, "oh okay" a lot. Like if you tell her to get the book and she can't find it and then you specify, "it is under the table", she will answer with an emphatic, "OH OKAY" as if to say, now I understand. She also went through a short period of overusing the word "only". She always used it appropriately it was just funny how often she came up with an occasion to use that word.

first freckle

I found Mia's first freckle the other day on her right wrist. I wonder if it'll stick around. If you ask her where her freckle is she will pull up her sleeve and show you.

Gavin = doggie?

We were at our ultrasound appointment to see if Gavin was healthy and of course whether he was a boy or girl and when we said, Mia do you see your little brother on the screen? She said
"doggie". Hahaha! I guess you can't blame her, to the untrained eye it really is hard to tell what is what on those ultrasound screens.

twinkle twinkle
One of my fond memories of Mia's toddlerhood will have to be how much she talks/sings on her way back from daycare. Whether on the bike seat or in the car seat she loves to sing. The other night she sang twinkle twinkle (her favorite lullaby) verbatim. She used to say "what a diamond in the sky" and leave out the "up above the world so high" part altogether but out of the blue came every single word and in the right order.

*despite how much fun it has been to track Mia's monthly developmental milestones I think after her 2 year birthday I am cutting back to biannual updates.

Fire!

OK so we live on 48th and Sansom St, which lies right between Walnut St. and Chestnut St. There was a huge apartment that caught fire on 49th and Walnut. It took us so long to get home today because of all the road blocks and traffic. Finally we got to our street and there was yellow tape so we couldn't enter. We told the cop we lived on that block and he let us under. THAT IS HOW CLOSE THE FIRE IS! I was slightly worried about smoke inhalation but the wind seems to be taking it up and in the right direction so as not to bathe us in it or else we may've gone to a hotel. We put a smoke detector right by Mia's window just in case since hers in the one facing the fire (not ours) although there are allegedly several dozen firetrucks working on this and the fire seems to be going down last I checked. Oh and our water pressure is way low, which I assume is based on their using so much of it to put out the fire. Anyway, here is a picture from our office window.

Potty Training

Mia has been potty training seriously since winter break. Ever since Mia said, "no more diapers anymore" we started to give her more nudy time and she has been really excited about it. When we were home from work for 2 weeks straight it was the perfect opportunity to get down to business. It is usually a combination of us watching her cues (the fidgety potty dance), us suggesting for her to go to the potty (lately met with a "no") and her running to the potty on her own (sometimes she has to have a tiny accident dribble down her leg before she realizes she has to run to the potty). Her accidents are fewer and further between though we still use a diaper at nap and bed time. The big day was deciding to incorporate potty training to daycare. They were very supportive and since she can't just run to the potty there (she has to be escorted to the bathroom) they just take her every 2 hrs. She goes willingly with them because I think she likes the escape from the big room and the one on one time it provides. She still has about 1 accident per day but has so many more successes. We recently started using a sticker reinforcement chart, which she loves. Anyway, here is a picture of her on the potty tonight. She still gets so happy to see her pee pee and poo poo in the potty when she gets up and then she usually looks for someone to high five or starts saying "hip hip hooray" (BUG).

prenatal appointments

21 weeks

20 week appointment with Christy

fundal height = 20.5 cm

my weight = 121.4 lbs

lost a lb from last month. . . she is not worried but suggested checking protein intake. She said to get at least 50g a day and I stopped counting when I hit 50 before dinner the day I checked.

New books checked out from her library: I got "Real food for mother and baby" and Dave got a book written for homebirthing dads.

my blood pressure = 112/78

my Pulse = 68 bpm

baby's heart rate = 156 bpm

baby weighs about 1 lb!

21 week ultrasound to check anatomy

It's a very healthy . . .BOY!!!

Here are the pictures:

Profile

Left foot and part of right foot

His boy parts (for those of you without children or ultrasound knowledge: imagine the baby is sitting on a glass table and you are looking up from below.)

Next appt with Christy is 1/27 (25 weeks)

Glucose tolerance test is 1/31

In order to give Mia a better sense of when our little boy will be arriving I made her a paper chain links countdown thingy this afternoon. Every weekend we will cut off another link and when there are no more left that is when her new baby brother will be here soon.