The ideas are rolling around inside of my head...

For the last week or two I have had moments of, "I need to blog about that" but never did it. Of course I have an excuse and my excuse is Evan. When I asked for the computer today he said that I could have it when his fingers were dead and cold. As you can see I am married to someone who is quite attached to his electronics. In reality he lets me use the computer whenever I ask and is much more gracious about it than I am.

Lately I have been having "you know you are pregnant when..." moments.
For example: "you know you are pregnant when..."
*If in the movie, School of Rock where Jack Black is talking to different students and telling them that they are great at this or that...makes you want to cry, then you are probably pregnant.

Ok, so I had a lot more examples but have forgotten them. Oops...I must be pregnant.

Jeremiah and I went to the Gresham Mom's Club playgroup today. I was very excited to get to hang out with some other moms and babies. I can be a bit shy in the beginning of things or meeting people, but I have thought about going since September. During the fall I didn't have a car so that was my excuse for being cooped up in the house all day and not having any friends. Now though I need to be around other moms so badly that I faced my fears and did it. It was actually a God thing. I had been thinking about getting involved in one of the mom's clubs around here and on Sunday I was really convinced that I needed to go to one. When I got home from church and looked at my email I had a message from the president of the mom's club inviting me to come to the playgroup. So I did.

It was at a church in Gresham, though not affiliated with a church. I had to drive there all by myself and I think I did some pretty good stick driving (that was the part I was more scared about). I found the church and went inside to where they were having some sort of meeting. I knew that the group met downstairs, but when I went down there were a ton of children's classrooms and I didn't know which one they met in. I listened to see if I heard any children and after a few minutes (I got there early) I heard someone go through a door. So I followed whoever it was and found where the group met. Yay! Jeremiah had fun playing and I had fun being there though I was not as outgoing as I would have liked. There were about six moms and nine kids all three and under. It was good. Good to get out of the house and good to be brave.

I thought I had a lot more to say, but if I don't blog right away I guess it goes out of my brain.

The 9 month mark

So you may or may not have heard the news, but...I am pregnant...again! The nice thing about not using birth control is that we don't really worry about getting pregnant or are surprised and unprepared when it happens. We actually expect it every month. Each month we wait for "the time" to come and if it doesn't, well then we probably have another child on the way. Usually every month I think I am pregnant. "I feel kind of queasy...I must be pregnant." "I have to go to the bathroom a lot...I must be pregnant." So forth and so on. This month I actually thought I wasn't pregnant which makes it funnier that I am.

After I had Jeremiah I asked God for at least 9 months before I got pregnant again. Sure enough I got pregnant when Jeremiah was 9 months old. God is funny like that, but he sure does answer prayer (I joke that next time I will ask for a year :). It is not surprising though considering how Evan's and my life together has followed a 9 month pattern fairly closely.

Here is the breakdown:
Dating-Engaged: 9 months
Engaged-Married: 9 months
Married-Jeremiah: 9 months
Jeremiah-Pregnant #2: 9 months

Now in 9 months we will have another baby and 9 months later...who knows? Every 9 months though we do expect some big change in our life to occur which keeps life interesting.

We are excited about having a baby. This time it is a lot easier to not worry so much since I have a good idea of what will be happening. It is nice to already have that experience. The second pregnancy is also a bit harder though. Taking care of Jeremiah is a big job that demands a lot of attention so the thought of being pregnant gets pushed out of the way a lot. I am sure when I am huge then I will think about it more, but at the moment it is easy to forget that there is a little "bean" inside of me that will someday be my son or daughter. We will hopefully get on the Oregon Health Plan again, so soon I can visit the doctor. I want to hear the ultrasound of the little heart beat and make sure there is just one and not two.

A new year already...

I can't believe that it is a new year already. I also can't believe that Jeremiah is 10 months old tomorrow! Time flies so fast when you have kids.

At the moment we are trying to undo some "accidental parenting" that we did in the sleep department with Jeremiah. We have never really had a plan with him when it came to sleep. We just kind of did whatever worked for the night, including him sleeping in our bed consistently for awhile. Well no one gets good sleep with that arrangement and frankly I don't want him to be sleeping in our bed till he is 5. I like a little alone, away from baby time each night as well. I have also been getting him to sleep in his crib every night at least for a few hours.

The problem is that he never learned how to soothe himself if he wakes up and how to go to sleep on his own. Consequently, he is almost a year and is still not sleeping through the night. That fact is further frustrating because he was such a great sleeper in the beginning. We thought we'd have no problems in this area! We are serious about this now and are engaging in a battle of the wills every night from now on in an attempt to get him to sleep on his own and to sleep for the whole night. The hard part is that he has a very strong will. We'll see who is still standing after a few days.

Wish us luck!

"You can do anything...that you want to do."

Cartoons aren't what they used to be, and for me that is ok since I never really liked the old ones anyway. I was never that into the roadrunner or Bugs Bunny. Recently I have started letting Jeremiah watch a few cartoons early in the morning since they seem to really capture his attention. When we watch regular adult shows, without the bright colors and songs, he may look at the t.v. a few times but he always decides he has better things to do.

When I set him in his crib in the mornings, giving me a chance to take a shower, he usually throws a fit and screams like he is being abandoned for life-with big tears and all. If, however, I put him in his crib and turn Dora the Explorer or Blues Clues on, he will stand there mesmerized for at least a half hour which is enough time for me to get ready. So while I don't want to get him hooked on t.v. at an early age, these shows are educational and fun and can make my ADD child quiet down more than anything else can. Even I like watching them.

So I decided to give a list of all the cartoons we have watched in the mornings and why they are so great.

Dora the Explorer: They sing songs and teach you Spanish. They even ask questions and then pause so that the viewers at home can answer, making it interactive.

Go Diego GO: I prefer this one to Dora, but it is very similar. Diego often teaches you about animals on his show. I learned a lot about the pygmy marmoset one day.

Handy Manny: Another one that teaches you some Spanish. This one has Manny the tool guy (who has a nice voice to listen to) and his talking tools. There are lessons learned throughout the show.

The Koala Brothers: This one is one of my favorites. It is a claymation type cartoon about some animals in the outback. The two koala brothers, Buster and Frank, go around the town finding people to help. Their motto: "We're here to help." The whole town even sings a helping song at the end of the show. Plus they all have wonderful Australian accents.

Charlie and Lola:I also really like this show. It is British and the characters are Charlie and his little sister Lola. They learn lessons like not "squabbling" and they are really kind to each other for the most part. I also love their accents.

Blues Clues: The ones with Steve are the better ones, but there are bright colors and shapes and songs. Kids learn all sorts of things from sign language to what colors can be mixed to form new ones. Recently they on the one about colors being mixed they taught us the normal colors like red and blue together make purple, but they also made lesser known colors such as chartreuse, and vermilion! Don't be surprised if you hear little children, sitting at the table coloring, say "Pass me the chartreuse crayon please."

Hope the list was enjoyed. If you'll excuse us Jeremiah and I have some t.v. watching, err I mean learning to do.

Mornings...

So here it is the morning of 5am shopping and freezing cold weather. Evan went out early this morning to get a few electronics at the sales while Jeremiah and I stayed home and "slept" (which basically means Jeremiah tossed and turned in our bed and I was kept awake by trying to keep him from rolling off). At the moment he is talking to himself in his crib where he is playing. I am writing because this morning I think I discovered one reason why God created babies.

Here it is: babies wake up and are happy to be alive and awake and are ready for the day as soon as their eyes open. which for them means being loved and playing with toys (sounds like a pretty good existence to me). This makes their parents happy and makes their day better (for a time). So each morning for a few moments at least, Jeremiah is happy with the world and his role in it thus making me happy to see him be that way. Unfortunately this happy awakeness doesn't tend to last long and the real world sets back in where he can't play with all that he wants or has to have his diaper changed.

Oh well, at least we have glimpses.

Here we go...

Since Jeremiah is being good in his crib I will take these few precious seconds to write my first post. Jeremiah is 8 1/2 months old and is beginning to get clingy with me, which is cute most of the time but inconvenient at others. Today I had played toys and occupied him all morning and it was nearing noon with no nap in sight for him and therefore no shower in the picture for me. So I set him in his playpen in the family room to take a quick, five minutes of me time, shower. He had already protested to being sat in his crib to play and I knew he would make a fuss over being alone in the family room. After my five minute shower I was finishing getting ready to the sound of him screaming at the top of his lungs as though I left him alone in the wilderness and had driven away never to return. Our lab Sydney happened to be in the room with him and didn't like the sound of him crying. Every time Jeremiah would scream, Sydney would put her face in the air and moan. It sounded like her maternal instincts were kicking in and that she was trying to get Jeremiah to calm down. All the while I was in the hallway laughing at the whole scene happening in the family room. All I could hear was scream, moan, scream, moan... It seemed like Jeremiah would calm down a little when Sydney would "talk" to him. I quickly finished what I was doing and rescued Jeremiah from the hard, cruel fate of being stuck in a safe playpen full of toys.

By the way I am finishing this blog the morning after I started it. Life with a baby.