bored
Can you tell I'm bored today? I have nothing better to do than check my email and fool around on the web. Since I'm not getting any email, I'm getting a lot of updating going on.

maternity clothes
Rob pulled down my maternity clothes form the attic yesterday. God, I forgot how much I hate those clothes!!! It's not the clothes fault. They're just pants and t-shirts for the most part. But, I have about 5 pants and about 9 shirts and some dresses. Not bad - until you have to wear them every day of your life for 4 months or so. (Not to mention afterwards for a little while. Although, if you just never get out of your pj's, it's not so much of a problem after) It's not like I dress with that much variety anyway. But, I at least have the choice. I have a huge closet, and my choices aren't that limited every day. It's depressing to look in your closet and see oddles of clothes that just dont' fit you. I'll have to buy a little more this time, since I'll need some long sleeves, but I'm going to stay in my regular clothes as long as humanly possible.

shopping
We went shopping this weekend and got a bunch of things we'll need for the baby. With Ally, we really didn't know what we wanted, and borrowed or got secondhand almost everything. Now, we (or maybe I) have specific wants in mind. The last bassinett was a little to unstable for Ally to be leaning over to look at the baby. The swings, we didn't like a lot while we had them. And, it was impossible to move them around. The bouncer was very plain and just fine, but it was borrowed and had to go back. (I could probably get it again, but a plain bouncer is cheap). And, lsat time, we were a little extravagant and bought me the expnsive rocker I wanted. We didn't however, buy me the footrest for it.

So, we went shopping this weekend. I found a bassinette that I think I will be perectly happy with. I found a one handed carry swing that sits low to the ground. And I bought my footrest. I'm so happy now. Nursing is good with a good rocking chair, but much better if you can put your feet up too. There are still some things we need to buy, but they aren't big, so we can do it within our budget at any time I think.

We still need a bouncer. I didn't use it that much with Ally. I could propbably have gone without, but I am anticipating needing it more with the next one. Ally will want me to play with her too occasionally. And in a seat, the baby can watch.

I'll have to buy a new crib mattress after the baby outgrows the bassinnette. The old one moved into Ally's toddler bed with her. But, this is good. This way, it doesn't have to be stored out in the garage until we need it again.

Now, if only I could start feeling better for good...

more hiding
Friday night, Darra came up and stayed the night. A little bit before bedtime, I pulled a load of clothers out of the dryer that had her blankets in it. She grabbed one and threw it over her head and hid. The other blanket was new. She got an Elmo comforter (hand-me-down that came with the bed) so I stretched it out on the floor for her to see. She laid down on it and explored it while still hiding. Bedtime came, and I told her to say good0night to G'ama and give her a hug. Nope. she was hiding. So I wrapped her up in the blanket and comforter and took her downstairs to bed. I tried to untangle her to put her in bed and she yelled at me. I convinced her to lay down by promising to let her hide. So, she climbed in bed, I threw the blanket over her and she fell asleep hiding.

She did a similar thing Saturday. I handed her to Rob wrapped in her blanket, and she gave him a hug. After a little while I went in to check on her after she was asleep. I pulled the cover off her face, and she started whining and wimpering. She said (in the most pathetic voice ever) "hidin hidin". So I let her sleep under the blanket. whatever...

I hate the time change
Fall backward is so great - my butt. I don't get an extra hour of sleep. I just have to be awake an hour longer. Ally woke up right on schedule Sunday at 6:00 which was now 5:00. Then, she got to stay up a little later, because we don't want to continue that early waking. Rob and I were staring at the clock at 7:30 wishing for bedtime.

my daughter is psychic
Yesterday, Ally wanted to play outside, and it was gorgeous. Of course, we let her. She made some sand castles ("sand puzzles") and played in her sand box for a while. She ran around playing on her slides, and generally having a good time. It started to get a little chilly out, and she started singing "rain rain go away". I looked at the sky, and there were no rain clouds. I asked her where the rain was, I didn't see any. She ignored me and kept singing. About a minute later, it started raining. The cold wind moving in brought a little bit of rain. About 5 minutes worth. It was very odd. She must be psychic. (or maybe, it's just a coincidence since she sings that song about 2 hours out of every day anyway)

sleep
Thursday night, I checked the temperature in the house while I was awake all night. It was much too warm. Ally is a hot baby. If she's too hot, she's cranky. Friday, I tried an experiment setting the thermostat a lot lower. Ally has slept just fine since then. Thank God. If our next baby is not a hot baby like Ally, she's going to have to live in fleece footy pj's

photo update
I added photos to Ally's album

I hope
I hope that Ally has a horrible day at day care;
that she is cranky all day;
that she fights them about everything;
that she naps welll;
that she wakes up with it all out of her system.

Lasy night I went to LLCC to work on one of my classes. Rob did not have fun while I was gone. By extension, I did not have fun when I returned. Ally wouldn't eat anything. 3 out of 4 kitchen chairs were pulled into the living room because they were soaking wet from the cups of water she had poured on them. She screamed most of the evening. she fought bed. Tylenol and ibuprofin didn't make any difference. I was up with her once, and then again about 45 minutes later for 2 1/2 hours. She didn't want to sleep. I'm so sick now. I hope she feels better tonight, cause I'm not sure I can take another night of that.

cold butt
The day care teachers told me a story yesterday. Ally sat on the little potty at potty time. She was fooling around instead of hlolding on very well, and she let her butt sink a little too far. Denise said her eyes got huge and she squealed and jumped up. She grabbed her butt and said "cold! butt!" They laughed and laughed at her. I wish I had seen it.

crayons
Ally loves to color. I have mentioned this before. Since she loves it so much, we have put a drawer of crayons in her art desk for her to play with when she wants. There is clean paper on the dividing wall by the stairs next to the desk. When she needs it, we give her more.

Lately, she has been climbing on top of her desk to get it herself. Not good. That wall is taller than she is, so she's not going to fall down the stairs. however, the desk gives her enough of a boost that she could climb the wall if she tried hard. We've had to try to teach her not to climb the desk.

We also went under her blanket the other day to hide with her and saw that she had been hiding something else. When she knows we can't see her, she colors on the wall. I know this is deliberate:
1. because there is a lot of crayon on the wall. Many colors.
2. because the crayon marks stop just before a spot where she would be visible. If she were coloring, and didn't know she wasn't supposed to, she wouldn't care if we could see her or not.
3. We asked her about it, and she was kinda proud.
She has also started coloring on other things. Like her sit-n-spin and her ride-on bus and her dad's pants (He's not happy about that one)

After she went to bed I had to Soft-Scrub (I love that stuff! It's the miracle cleaner) the wall. I gathered up all her crayons, and put them out of reach. She's not going to be happy. I hate having to do it, but I also hate scrubbing walls. Kid has got to learn some limits

dr appointment
I saw my OB yesterday. He said everything looks normal. Then he crushed my hopes. The next apointment I have scheduled is the 22nd of Nov. I will be 17 weeks along. He told me before to schedule a sonogram then too and we could find out that the baby is a girl. He looked at the calendar and decided it was too early for all the sonogram measurements then. We had to reschedule it for Dec 15th. Boo-hoo.I want the sosnogram now! I'm so jealous of all those people who get to have 5 or 6 of them. I have 2 per pregnancy unless I am past my due date. Then he'd schedule another one. I get to see the little kidney bean at 8-9 weeks, and then get to see the baby halfway through. Oh well, I'll just have to be patient I guess. It's not my strong suit.

We're not artists
Ally expects us to be able to draw anything she wants. She brings us a crayon (usually yellow), paper, and her clipboard and commands us to draw something impossible like a monkey. Now, I don't know about you, but when I draw a monkey, it usually looks like a mutant polar bear. I'm just not artistic. Rob is a little better than me, so Ally likes to ask him more. hmmm... Did I say ask? She doesn't really ask... It's more of a command. She puts the crayon in his hand and points at the paper and repeats "kitty" (or whatever shes asking him to draw) until he does it. Then she points elsewhere on the paper and do the same. Rob likes to vary it up a little. He'll try to think of new things to draw. She loves it. She gets her face down to the paper as close as she can and tries to figure out what he's drawing. Then he can't see anymore. He's becoming a contortionist trying to seee around her. I love to see them sitting together like that. It just makes my heart warm. And, there's the added bonus that he has her undivided attention instead of me.

the floor
2 nights in a row, I have had to pick Ally up off the floor in the middle of the night and put her back in bed. I never hear a thump. I don't think she's falling out. I think maybe, she's just rolling around, and her legs go off the side. Then she moves around to get comfortable and ends up on the floor. She doesn't really wake up when it happens. She calls out for me in her sleep, I pick her up, lay her down in bed, and cover her up and she sleeps the rest of the night. It's odd though.

peace
Last night was wonderful! Ally ate earlier than we did. She ate a lot, and didn't even ask for juice once. Then, she played by herself for a little while. When Rob and I ate dinner, she came over to him with a crayon, and asked him to color. He told her he was eating, and he'd color after dinner. So, she asked me. I told her the same thing, and she went accepted it and played by herself some more. We got to spend a relaxing evening. It was quiet, and very un-stressful. After the last week, we needed it.

teething
Saturday night, Ally put up a fight when bedtime came. This wasn't any different, because she's been doing that 2 or 3 days before that too. When she's teething, bedtime is no fun. The only way I've been getting her to sleep, is to get her in bed, fight a little, then, when she's crying, I offer her "medicine" (Tylenol - but to Ally, anything that comes out of a dropper is medicine) and then she gives up and goes to sleep. I usually have to re-dose her around 1. Then she wakes up around 5. it sucks.

However, last night, she didn't do it. She laid her head down like normal and went to sleep after rearranging her stuffed animals. This morning I felt her teeth, and the top left molar has broken through with both cusps, and the right has 1 broken through. Yay!

Zoolie Goulie
They had a trick-or-treating thing at the zoo today. I dressed Ally up in black, and threw her in the car at the end of her nap to go. When she woke up, we were at the zoo and she got excited. I pulled her costume (a pumpkin) over her head. She looked down at her belly and said "pumpin". She sounded confused. She got used to it though and liked it. The whole zoo thing kinda sucked. There was long lines whole time. It wasn't really even about seeing the animals. I thought they'd have a little more emphasis on the zoo, but it was all about passing out candy.

Anyway, we got out of line a couple times and stopped at the animals. Ally likes the monkeys a lot. She stopped to pet the donkey. She wanted to pet the goats, but I wouldn't let her. They were really stinky, and her hands would have frozen if I'd had to wash them. It was pretty chilly out.

We stopped for the longest time at the duck pond. I didn't have any quarters, so we couldn't get the food out of the vending. I always have crackers though. We broke up crackers and tossed them in for a while. Ally thought we were just throwing things though. She didn't understand that the ducks only liked it because it was food. Everytime, we got to the end of the crackers she had, she'd start throwing them leaves. She had just as much fun throwing leaves as she did food. The ducks didn't. One of the swans got impatient once and tried to peck her hand. He probably would have made it too. He was tall. I pulled her back a little and tried to convince her to stop throwing leaves.

head, shoulders, knees and toes
I had Ally dressed for Halloween for our trip to the zoo. I put black tights on her under black pants. As we were in the car, she was singing "knees and toes" over and over again. Then she was quiet for a minute, and then said "hiding!?" I turned to look at her and she had pulled both pant legs up past her knees, looking for them, but she couldn't find them because of the tights she had on.

I am never writing in here about anything again!!
I said I hadn't been sick for a week, and got sick again. I said Ally was doing real well in her bad, and...

At about 4, Ally woke up crying. I went in and covered her up and she went back to sleep. 45 minutes later, she was crying again. I went in and almost tripped over her. She was curled up on the floor. She's been really cranky lately (Rob says I have too, so maybe she's taking her cues from me). I think she might be teething. She really didn't sleep well last night. Therefore, no one slept well last night.

This blog is cursed.

toddler bed
Firday night, I set up a toddler bed for Ally. Our plan is this:
1. replace the crib with toddler bed. bed is in exact same spot crib used to be.
2. In a couple months, tell Ally how big a girl she is and let her start sleeping in her toy room instead. Put toddler bed in same spot extra twin bed is. Move twin bed into Ally's old room (Darra sleeps on that bed when she visits, so Ally's room will become grandma's room)
3. Let baby sleep in bassinette for a month or so after she is born. Darra stays to help out after the baby is born, so she will still have a place to stay. Maximize the amount of time the crib is unseen to be forgotten.
4. Set new baby up in Ally's old room. Hopefully, enough time will have passed so as not to bother Ally.

I know plans never turn out as expected, but at least we've got one this time. Hope it works.

Anyway, Ally is doing pretty good in her big-girl bed. Since Friday, I have only had to go in and help her back into bed once. That was last night. I heard her whining and went in to check on her. She was still asleep, but had her feet on the ground and belly on the bed. I put her back in bed and she got comfy. I didn't hear from her again until she woke up.

She doesn't seem to understand that she's not confined to bed yet. For this I am very grateful. She doesn't get up without me ever. She lays in bed whining until I go in to let her up in the morning. I could do without the whining, but am glad she doesn't wander the house yet. That will come soon enough, I'm sure.