oh the irony...
I just got an email advertising "Viagra Soft Tabs". I may be immature, but it made me chuckle.

at least she'll know what to do...
I have no hope for Ally's vision. Rob got glasses in 1st grade (I think) I got mine in 2nd. I'm sure that Ally will too. Bad genes and all. But, here's the silver lining: Ally already knows how to put in contacts. This morning, she woke up before I had mine in, and I sat her on the toilet seat to talk to me while I got ready (oh, family tradition... The bathroom was the only place my mother ever stood still long enough that I could sit and talk to her). She told me that she wanted to do it. I decoded, and figured out she wanted to put my contacts in. Since I was already finished, I gave her the contact case with some solution still in it. She carefully dipped her right index finger in, and poked herself in the eye. (gently - she didn't hurt herself) Then she did it all over again with her left index finger and left eye. Then she blinked a couple times and said "I got my contacts in". It was truly a remarkable performance.

fingernails
I painted Ally's fingernails last night. They are purple. She loved it. But, I couldn't get her to stand still and pose for a good picture. I'll try again. I think it's so cute!! I'm glad I have a girl. (She's getting better at brushing my hair too!)

too much orange juice
Ally decided that she was hungry as we were getting ready to leave Bloomington. I thought it was too close to bedtime, and it was her fault she hadn't eaten, and she was probably just stalling anyway and was just going to let her be, but you know my husband. He's such a pushover. He thought we should give her a glass of milk or OJ or something before we left. I convinced him it wasn't necessary, and we left. We had to stop for a bottle of water for me, and Rob made me get her a bottle of OJ too. She drank about half of it before I took it away from her. She would have drank more. As I'm worrying about her spilling it, Rob tells me that he would have poured half of it out. Too late. Besides, I thought of that, and I KNOW that if I had done it, and she cried because she wanted more, he would have gotten annoyed with me.

So, she fell asleep. We got home, settled her into bed and got ready ourselves. She started fussing. Then, crying. I went in. More crying. and coughing. "Do you want a drink" no. I picked her up and was planning on rocking her when she started coughing more, and retching a little. So, I took her in the bathroom (tile floor) just in time to get puked on. Ally has had a cold, and so I'm sure her stomach already was upset from the mucus and all, the OJ didn't help. I felt so bad for her. She was covering her mouth and trying to keep from puking. Then she was crying, and coughing some more. She told me "I want to spit it out" So I told her to do it - it was okay. Poor kid. She thought she was doing something wrong. Or maybe I'm projecting here; the first time I remember puking, I distinctly remember the impression that my mom was impatient with me because I hadn't learned to puke in the toliet. (Sorry if that's not true, Mom, but hey, that's what I remember)

So we sat in the bathroom for a while and puked into a towel or 2 until she got it all out. I encouraged her and told her she was being a good girl, and stripped her down to her diaper, and as soon as she got her stomach emptied out, she was fine, and fell asleep wrapped in a blanket on my chest. Rob stood around for a while and did what he could, and actually told me that I handled it well. He never does that. He can find something wrong with everything I ever do in a case where she's sick. I hate being married to a paramedic sometimes. If I didn't know him better, I would think he felt guilty about making me get the the OJ in the first place, but his comments later proved otherwise. He made sure to point out that he thought she should have had a glass of milk or OJ before we left. Like 15 minutes would have made a difference.

I felt so sorry for Ally, but she managed to not really get any puke on her, and barely get any on me (except a tiny bit on our clothes), so we didn't have to bathe or anything, and she went back to sleep, so I'm not even sure she remembered it in the morning.

Cullen
I can't believe how well Ally plays with Cullen. It's amazing to watch them together. She follows him around and laughs at everything he does. We stayed at Grandpa Bob and Grandma Glinda's until bedtime and let Ally sleep on the way home. She and Cullen played and played. It gives me hope that someday, I can see that with her and her little sister too.

Famous Dave's
We drove back to Bob's house and let Ally sleep. When she woke up, we all went to Famous Dave's for supper. I don't really like BBQ, but they have to-die-for corm muffins. I always order them as an appetizer and have side dishes for my meal. As soon as the waitress brought them, Ally grabbed one and said "I want to eat one" She proceeded to shovel it in. Cullen (her 4 yo cousin) was playing with her a little before this, and tried again to tickle her after she got the muffin. She told him "I want to eat right now." Of course, that was all she would eat, but hey, I expected that.

Children's Discovery Museum
Rob's dad bought a grandparents membership at the museum in Bloomington. He's been trying to get us to bring Ally over and go for a while now, but the schedule has never really worked out. Saturday, we took the day and went. Ally played for a little over 2 hours and seemed to really enjoy herself. She certainly hit just about every area there. I was very proud of her too. She didn't run around crazy, she just played. And when she got interested in something else, she moved on. When we got done, Rob had the brilliant idea of getting her hand stamped on the way out the door, so she didn't even throw a fit when we left. It was a very pleasant afternoon.

new panties
I took Ally shopping Friday. While I was looking at some new onesies for pajama tops, Ally decided that she wanted to buy new panties. I figured what the hell, she's going to need them eventually, so I picked up a couple packs of training pants and asked her which one she wanted. She didn't want any I had though. She wanted the pretty blue ones. They are very obviously boys, but again...what the hell. So Ally was happy all weekend that she had new blue panties to wear. (but still peed in them occasionally)

new pictures
Click 27 months old over to the right. They are really cute!

I'm changing some stuff around with the links. Previously, I updated every album with new links when I got new pictures, but that's getting time consuming. For now, they are half-way updated, and you can still jump around them, but I'm working on a way to put them all over there to the right so I only have to update them once. The problem is that I'm going to have to find a way to organize them. I mean I'll have some of Ally, some of the new baby, and some of them together, so I'm working on a organizational scheme that'll work for all of it.

Oh hey, I think I might have an idea. I think I'll continue to list them by how old the kid is and have 2 lists. On days that I get pictures taken with them both, I'll just link to the album twice - once under each kid. That way, all the pictures that got taken that day are still together, but sort of still can belisted seperately. Am I a huge dork for caring?

baby sister
If you ask Ally where her baby sister is, she'll say one of 2 things to you:

1. in Mommy's belly

or

2. I have a baby brother in my belly

girls and boys
That whole theory about girls and boys being basically the same, and the environment molding them to different stereotypes? is crap. Have you ever seen a boy throw a screaming fit because he wanted to wear a different pair of socks or shoes?

In December, at Marisa and Bamako's birthday party (Ally's cousins age 7 and 1 month younger than Ally) there was an alphabet puzzle and some cars. Ally put the puzzle together, while Bamako tried to drive the cars on it. We have tried repeatedly to get Ally to play with cars. I think I have mentioned Rob's trips to Walmart to buy them. Most of what she likes to do with them is drive them over to the car wash area on her play mat one by one and pretend they are getting a car wash. But, give her a set of play food, and she'll sit and feed you for hours.

ponytails
Hey, I forgot to mention that Ally let s me put her hair in ponytails again. YAY! For the longest time, she refused. I have no idea why. I'd do it anyway, and her teachers would just tell me she took them out, so I gave up. That was Room 5. Now we're in Room 6, and the teachers there are like Room 4. If Ally takes her ponys out, they usually put them back in (if they have time). Plus, she hates the wind blowing hair in her eyes, and I think I finally convinced her that ponytails would keep the hair out of her eyes. I just couldn't bear to cut it short, and so am very glad now that I can make it cute.

morning rituals
We have a little morning ritual we do most of the time. It goes something like this.

I get up and take a shower and get ready to leave

When I'm ready to walk out the door, I gather up Ally's clothes (and a couple extra pair of socks in case she throws a fit and wants to wear orange socks with her blue outfit) and put them in a bag and take it and the coat to the car.

I wrap her up like a burrito in her blanket and take her out to put her in the carseat. Sometimes she wakes up for this. Sometimes she doesn't. When she does she usualy tucks her head down and pulls into the blanket anyway, so it doesn't much affect me.

Whether awake or not, she usually yells "Let me do it" when I start buckling her in. She has just about mastered the upper buckle and always wants to "help"

I drape her blanket over her head and tuck her in for the ride in town

We go into day care wrapped up like a burrito again in her pajamas and go potty and get dressed there.

It works out rather well for us. It'll be even better when the weather actually warms up, because then I won't have to feel so guilty about taking her out without a coat on.

Posted by ktjrdn at 07:38 CST

Post Comment | Permalink
Commenters' email address will be kept private

baby moving
I love to feel the baby moving around all day. It's the weirdest feeling - impossible to explain. Oh, I could describe it just fine. It starts out kinda feeling like gas, then the baby get stronger and it feels like someones walking around in there. It's the ricochet of emotions that follow it that cloud up the description. Rob told me the other day "You're awfully fascinated by that seeing how you've already done it once" There is just no way for a man to understand the act of growing a baby. It makes every emotion that you've ever heard of pass through your head at least once (a day). I can go from feeling an all-encompassing love that almost makes me cry - to cussing the pregnancy for making me so miserable - to laughing at the baby for being obstinate and not letting me push and shove her out of the one little painful place that she always manages to get lodged in - to ... oh you get the point I suppose ... and there is no break in between these feelings. They come at you from every direction all at once, and all I am left doing is smiling down at my belly and watching the movements.

This is the best part of the pregnancy. It's after the halfway point. The sonogram is done(so that part of the worry is over). Everyone always asks the same questions over and over again and butts in to your life like they actually know you, but it's all good. I even secretly like it. It's the part 6 weeks from now that starts to get a little rough. Everyone knows it's almost time, and you just about go mad with anticipation.

But for now, I'm coasting (with the help of my friend Zantac).

sleep
Sleep has been decent the last couple days. But last night, Ally started dreaming agin. I'm not sure what she was dreaming about, but she kinda reminded me of watching a dog kick at stuff and "running" in its sleep. (OMG, I just compared my daughter to a dog) She'd be all peaceful, then suddenly,she's be tossing and turning and whining. I was up for an hour and a half straight, and then had trouble sleeping myself. Leaning over a toddler bed and rocking a toddler do nothing to help prevent heartburn. Oh thank god, only 2 weeks left!

The very definition of monotony
My job today could have driven anyone insane. I'm redesigning some screens for one of our applications. They have old ugly buttons on them. I'm making them new and pretty. My boss is oking the design. He is sometimes picky. now, before I go any farther, I'm going to say that I like doing monotonous work occasionally. It's very time-consuming. We played with buttons for hours. We tried to change the size a little, use images versus text, tried about 5 different checkmarks before my boss decided he really didn't like the checkmarks, ditto for x's, finally he decided on numbers. I like words better. We ended the day in a stalemate. Tomorrow, he's going to ask for a third or forth opinion. What a way to spend the day. hey, at least I had work to do.

Kids say the darndest things (even while they are asleep)
Ally has been cracking me up lately. Here's a sampling:

"Look. Lots of boobs!" This was said as we were walking through the bra section of JCPenney's

"I have a capital rock and a small rock" We've been working on capital versus small letters. Now I guess rocks aren't big anymore either.

"Pop! pop! pop! Come on Mommy pop with me" This one took me a while to figure out. She was poking at nothing in the air. I assumed she was popping imaginary bubbles. I learned this weekend I was wrong. We were sitting in the car waiting for Rob and I let Ally pull a Kleenex out of the box. Immediately dust flew in the air and was visible in the sunshine. She started popping the dust. Ah-ha!

My pancakes

"The mouse swiped my bed" This is why she woke up crying Saturday night. The kid has got an active imagination. We're starting to teach her about dreams a little now.

"I don't like those bites. I want to eat breakfast" She was whining this last night while asleep.

Also while we were sitting in the car the other day, I tried to get Ally to sing with me. I said "What do you want to sing? How about ABCDEF.....?" "NO" "Row, row row..." "NO" "(to the tune of jingle bells) no, no, no. no, no, no..." She joined in. We sang the no song for a while. Then she said "I want to sing the yeah song" so we sang the yeah song for a while. Then she told me to stop. She made me sing the yeah song while she sang the no song. She had a great time with it all.

petting zoo
Did I tell you all that we went to an exotic petting zoo on Saturday? I don't think so. Consider yourself told.

The State Fairgrounds had a kids thingy in the Orr building, so we decided to check it out. Ally had a blast. She got to see (but not pet) kangaroos, monkeys, and tigers, (and pet) an aligator, goats, llamas, oh, I don't know what else. There were animals. She cracked up at the monkeys.

They also had a couple rides. (It sounds kinda lame as I write this though. Am I that easily amused?) She rode the camel with Rob. It didn't look at all comfortable, and I'm not sure I could have gotten on even if it hadn't been a stupid thing to do 7 months pregnant. She jumped in a blow-up jumping tent thing a couple times. Then she decided she wanted to ride the swings.

Scary.

These swings were pretty big seats, but did not have seat belts. I did not notice this until we were committed to letting her ride. There was a bar across the front, and a chain between her legs. that's all. It's not like the ride was extraordinarily fast or anything, but she could have stood up and fallen at any time. I was holding on fears in because Rob seemed to be sure of himself, but when the ride was over, he said "I can't believe we let her on that" I about kille dhim. Anyway, it worked out. We only had 1 scare. But the ride operators couldn't get her out of the swing. Rob had to go get her kicking andscreaming. She was tired by that point, and wanted to swing some more.

She took a good nap. In fact, that may be the day that we snuggled up on the couch to fall asleep...?

swiper
Ally has become a little Swiper. She's terrified that Swiper will take her stuff, but it seems to be okay to pretend she is Swiper, and take our stuff.
She'll take something and then yell "You'll never find it now" and giggle like crazy.

sleeping
Ally is. I'm not. Rob can't. It sucks. Rob's finally got a c-pap machine, but it doesn't help. he can't fall asleep with it on. I can't gte comfortable. Ally though, has really taken to sleeping in her toy room. Most of the time, I don't even have to get up with her once. I still can't make her go to bed on her own - I have to stay with her, but it's not too bad I suppose.

Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night yelling about someone taking her stuff. I swear she is obsessed. 2 nights ago it was her pancakes. I wake up to hear "MY PANCAKES!!! MY PANCAKES!!" The kid was still asleep and dreaming that someone is stealning her pancakes. I had to wake her up a little bit and remind her that she was in bed and sleeping. She slept the rest of the night just fine.