A Week with the Gs

Well we did it! We actually left Tessa for a WHOLE WEEK, the first time I have ever left her overnight at all. I tagged along on a business trip with Jeremy to Rome (seperate pics to follow) and Tessa stayed here with Jeremy's Dad and Stepmom who prefer to be called 'the Gs' (Grammie and Grampie).

I was nervous, not about the excellent care Tessa would receive, but more about going nuts from missing Tessa. I'm happy to say every one had a great time, both at home and abroad. Tessa was very well behaved for the Gs and pretty much stuck to her normal routine. It was also great that we got to see her a couple times using our webcam and Skype.

The Gs left this morning and I think Tessa is looking around for them, especially their dog Annie who became her good friend. I wonder if they are having baby withdrawal too :)

Here's a few pics from their stay...

Before we left town we went out to St. Elmos to celebrate Jeremy's belated birthday. Truly one of the best restaurants in Indy, I was very pleased at how well Tessa behaved and ate. She did decide to stick her hands down into her dirty diaper but luckily that was right as we were leaving!

They had lots of fun during their stay....
....they went to Mamaw's house
....ate yogurt with peaches
.....played kitchen
.....played with the wiener dogs
....snoozed on the couch

.....went to library storytime
.....and the children's museum
....had nakey time
....and became good friends with Annie
Those Gs sure did a GREAT job!!!

It's strange being back home and settling into today. I'm still pretty jet lagged with swollen feet, but Tessa seems to not have noticed any major change in her life and is acting normal. I'm glad she's not mad at us for leaving, but how could she be....she had so much fun!

It's A......

Just kidding! Yes we had the big ultrasound today but as promised we did NOT find out the gender. The ultrasound lady didn't even look 'down there' so she doesn't know and neither does our doctor....so there's no chance of him slipping up.

Everything looked perfect and the little Peanut was bouncing around. It's heartrate was 152 which is apparently right on point.

Everything is good with me too. My bp was 120/78 and I've actually gained TEN POUNDS since last month's appt. How that happened I'm not exactly sure since I'm still nauseous alot and not eating very big portions. I'm always hungry but pretty much always queezy too so I snack alot....lots and lots of bananas and cereal bars.

So that sorta sucks but I'm calling it a baby growth spurt. I've gained 16lb total and Doc Bowers is pretty happy with that.

Paying a Visit

Earlier this week Jeremy's Mom and Stepdad were here as one of the many stops on their cross country road trip. They got some good quality time with Tessa including a little trip to the zoo.

Daddy went along while Mommy stayed home to sleep in :) Apparently Tessa quacked at the ducks and roared at the lion, which I'm sorry I missed.

As you can see Tessa got into a fight, you should see the other guy. Actually she took a fall on the concrete on our patio, poor girl.

Why couldn't I go to the zoo?

Jeremy's New Toy

One benefit of Jeremy's travels is that he racks up both airline points and Marriott points, with which he can sometimes get free stuff. He got his playstation last year and yesterday his newest reward arrived, an HD camcorder.

When I told him the UPS man was here he practically leaped the furniture and knocked over the baby to get to his camcorder, and has been playing with it since. Here is some test footage:


Pretty cool eh? Apparently we can burn this stuff to HD dvds someday. He is only 15 night in Marriott away from a free Wii, so I've been telling him to get on the road!!

You may notice the boo boo on Tessa's face. Believe it or not that's what left of a bug bite she got on Tuesday. It was really swollen and her eye was all red but I've been giving her benadryl and it's progressively getting smaller. No idea what kinda bug, something she swatted away while were outside playing.

My New Bling

Last time I was pregnant and my fingers got fat, I just took my wedding ring off and wore it around my neck. That worked except when it was all said and done my ring is really scratch now. Plus I don't want guys hitting on me all the time cause they thing I'm single ;)

So Jeremy's cousin Meradith who makes jewelry made me three beautiful rings to choose from in great big sizes for swollen finger. I LOVE THEM! They are the coolest rings ever. It's hard to see the detail in the picture this one is all wire and little silver beads.

Thanks Meradith for your great work! Everyone should check out her work: www.meribella.etsy.com
www.myspace.com/meribella
meribella@comcast.net

I thought I'd show you how Tessa 'helps' me get ready in the morning. Either she watches Sesame Street or plays in my closet. Shoes are her favorite, she loves to pull them all out on the floor and try them on. She also just discovered she can reach in my makeup drawer, pull out lipsticks and stick her finger in them...that's not good.

First Belly Pic

I thought it was time...

19 wks pregnant with Peanut

Looky we're wearing long sleeves! The weather today is awesome, in the low 60's and we finally can turn the AC off. The other thing that made my day? Pumpkin Spice Lattes at Starbucks! Yup it's officially fall people, my favorite time of year.

Back in Action

We were back at stroller aerobics for the first time since July this morning. Our instructor took off 6 wks to have a baby and was there with her 3 week old boy ready to go. She's super woman! It was great to be back at it, although I'm a little more restricted than before, haha! She warned me not to overheat and watch my balance. I also got to take a break while the other women did their abs.

Our other normal activities have been on summer hiatus also so I'm very happy that both library storytime and MOPS are starting again. We haven't been bored exactly, it's just nice to have somewhere cool to go several days a week instead of just wandering around.


I realize this is the darkest picture ever but I tried to capture Tessa napping with her baby who she insisted on laying with this afternoon. I was trying not to wake her with flash.

Look Ma!

I can climb up here...

And here...

Make a funny face...

And drive an Indy Car!

The last picture is from yesterday's visit to the Children's Museum. Since Tessa has been so into climbing lately I thought I should take her there to blow off some steam (and the park was too wet).

I plan on taking a belly picture of me and Peanut soon, stay tuned!

Barf

I threw up again this morning. This time it wasn't my pill, I just coughed really hard.

Skinny Butt

I tried Tessa's size small fuzzinbuz on after naptime and I'm shocked that they actually fit. We retired these when she was like 9mos old because they were too tight on her legs, and now they fit again. I wasn't expecting that.

Maybe this is a temporary fix to our diaper fit problem which is great cause we don't have to buy anything new, yay!

By the way, Tessa just figured out how to climb on the coffee table and stand on it....great.

Tooth Update

Well I went to the dentist this am to see what's up. The antibiotic she called in for me last week worked serious wonders on my tooth pain, which actually had me worried it was an infection.

And lo and behold it is, boo :( I have an infection in the site of my one and only root canal, under the crown, but the crown in still in tact. It's not horrible or emergent but needs to be dealt with eventually.

So I have two options and the dentist said it doesn't matter to her which I choose. I can go ahead and have a fix-it procedure on the root canal in which they would drill a hole through my crown or God forbid as she put it 'go in from the top'...either of which would require anesthesia. Option two is that I can continue to take antibiotics the rest of my pregnancy to keep the infection down and have it done after Peanut is born.

So it's anesthsia vs. antibiotics. I have an appointment with my OB in two weeks and I'm going to ask him which route he prefer I go. The dentist said she didn't have enought pregnancy expertise to advise me.

This tooth is seriously the bain of my existance. I have a crown there because about 3 years ago I had a filling in that tooth that got infected and I let it go and writhed in pain during the whole week the office was closed for Christmas. By the time they re-opened the infection was so bad I wanted to kill myself and also I lost the tooth. Now it's infected again....crap on a cracker!

Argh..more poop frustration!

We've had some very messy and disgusting frustration around here lately. Tessa's bumgenius diapers are one size fits 5-35lbs so she's been wearing them forever. We bought them when she was about 7 months and outgrew her small fuzzibunz.

Well she's an active girl and has skinny legs (didn't get them from me) and lately has been blowing out of the legholes of dipes, like once a day. Argh!! They are all the way tightened on the legs snaps but still leave too much room.

So I have a couple of ideas.....double stuff the diapers to make them thicker (and tighter), buy vinyl covers to protect from blowouts, feed her lots of bananas and white bread so she doesn't have such loose poo, borrow some of another brand from a friend or pull out her size small fuzzibunz from the closet and see if they still fit. They actually probably do although they might be 'low rise', haha.

Or I could feed her more junk food in an effort to fatten up her legs. Hey it worked for me :)

On the topic of diapers (if you haven't left by now I commend you!) Tessa has been diaper rash free for over a month! I told Jeremy I feel like someone in AA...hi this is Tessa and she hasn't had a rash in 32 days.

I really credit cutting back her fruit intake. I think her stomach just can't handle too much acid. She pretty much only has bananas, apples and grapes. If she has something acidic it's only in very small amounts. That plus triple (instead of double) stuffing her diapers at night have really cleared things up. Her nightime dipe is seriously so thick she can't walk when she has it on. You remember the little brother in A Christmas Story?

Jamming to the Kids Music

I used to swear that I would never let Tessa listen to cheesy kid's music, but that's only because I didn't know kid's music could be this good!

I freaking love this video. We watch probably once a day on noggin.com and Tessa dances, and says 'dack dack' (her version of quack).


And this is my other fave. These guys, Nothing but Stringz, are awesome and I think it's so cool they play music on kids shows.

Big Ouchies

My tooth hurts. Really hurts alot. It feels like my crown or maybe the tooth next to it, but all I know is I can't chew anything, not even soft things, on that side of my mouth. It started very suddenly too about two days ago.

My dentist is closed both today and Monday so I'm hoping I can wait until Tuesday but I know I shouldn't delay if it's an infection. Here's hoping I don't have to call the emergency number over the weekend. Last time I ignored major tooth pain I ended up in an emergency root canal.

So my question is to anyone who's had dental work while pregnant. I know I can do xrays now that I'm in the second trimester, but can they dope my up to do the dental work? I certainly hope so! I would love some good pain meds, but I don't know if I can get any at all. I may be all about natural childbirth but I am NOT all about natural dental work.

Update: I called the pager number and my dentist called in a safe antibiotic for me and said take lots of ibuprofen. Glad I called...at least this way I'm sure to not get a tooth infection. She said I couldn't have any of their normally perscribed pain meds but ibuprofen should help.

Edited again to Add: Yes I did figure out I'm only supposed to take small amounts of ibuprofen and not 'lots' as it can cause preterm labor in high doses. Good thing I figured that out before I doped up!

Trying to be All Artsy

My new attempt at being crafty....gluing buttons and beads and things to hair clips. You can see the big one broke already. I think that's cause I need to try stringing the small beads instead of gluing them directly to the barrette. (it was beautiful until I tried to open and close the barrette...oops)

Yes I did superglue my fingers together, so I need to work on that as well.

Gag Me With a Pill

It's a good thing I only have to take two pills a day, cause I have to say a little prayer everyday that I can swallow those without gagging myself and throwing up. Same thing goes for brushing my teeth.

I hurt my neck the other day and would love to take some tylenol for the pain, but can't seem to muster up the strength to swallow extra medicine. Oh well.

Happy Birthday Mamaw, Daddy and Mark

It's birthday week at our house. My mom, Jeremy and our nephew Mark all had birthdays this week.

Jeremy requested only an oatmeal cake for his birthday so that's what we had, along with dinner with Erin and Rafe on Saturday. After dinner we played about 3 hrs of Monopoly and Jeremy obliterated us...or maybe we let him win for his birthday. I've never played Monopoly the way Jeremy's family does and I gotta say it's alot more fun. They allow all kinds of shrewd deals and negotiating. I knew we were in trouble when Jeremy whipped out the calculator.

Of course the most important celebration of the week was Mark's 5th birthday...so hard to believe. His party was yesterday along with David's dedication. Tessa has been sick with either a summer cold or teething related snotfest..not sure which. Because of that we decided to skip the church part and went straight to the party afterward.

She was happy for a quite a while playing in the sweltering heat in Becky's parent's barn. But once she hit the end of her rope she turned into a drama mama. I think she freaked out poor dad-to-be Brian when we sorta screamed in his face.

She's feeling alot better today. Her bottom canine teeth have cut through so I think that may be what it was.

There's lots of tractors at the Ward house, even one Tessa's size. Just look out when Bob's driving

Tessa really liked basketball. We may have to get one of these next summer

Check out Mark's John Deere cake!

The boys have a cool new fort that everyone loved playing on.

Since we are over-run with tomatoes, Jeremy has decided to make Ragu today, but the smell is absolutely killing me. It basically smells like beef stew for about 8 hrs. I haven't been able to eat very much today for fear of barfing. I'm really surprised that these smell and food aversions aren't better by now, which leads Jeremy to believe it's a boy.

Starting My Own Collection

I'm kinda jealous of Tessa's awesome collection of hair accesories so have decided to start a grown up colleciton of my own. I discovered this cool website http://www.etsy.com/ and it's a good thing I haven't found it before now...lots of handmade jewelry and accesories on the cheap.

I got a few cool bobby pins like this:
So tell Santa, that's what I'm into at the moment

In other random news Tessa slept until 8:30 this morning and only woke up because I pried her out of bed so we wouldn't be late for our walk with Traci. She's not sick, just really tired from our trip and busy week, so I'm declaring today lazy day. Here's hoping she sleeps that late tomorrow morning...that would be awesome!!

16 wk check up

All is well in Peanut-land. I had my 16 week appointment this morning. It was one of those weigh, blood pressure, pee and leave sort of appointments. I also got to hear the heartbeat again.

All is going well. My blood pressure was only 109/62 and since it was so early in the morning I asked if that meant I was technically still asleep. They have my weight gain at only 6lbs which is alot less than my home scale says, so I'm going to go with their professional opinion on that :)

I scheduled the BIG ultrasound for a month from now. Isn't it hard to believe it's that time already? It will be exciting but we are still planning to not find out the gender so not quite as pins and needles as last time.

Summertime in NYC

Narrated by Tessa herself

This past weekend we went to New York City, where my Aunt Jessie lives. Daddy was there working so Mommy and I got on a plane to meet them. I was good for Mommy on the plane except when I screamed a little. She says taking her into the potty with me was the hardest part.

When we were there I got to play alot in Aunt Jessie's apartment, ride the subway and taxis, eat good food, see horsies with carriages and lots of doggies, meet some cousins, see some cool places and point at all the pigeons. It was pretty cool.

Aunt Jessie had a tubby! Once I got overexcited and fell in while Mommy was trying to potty, but I was okay. Aunt Jessie even had bubbles for me.

We were going to see this famous statue but the boats were all full. We saw it from a distance.

There were these weird birds called pigeons walking around everywhere. I saw some of them in this park and almost touched one before Mommy jerked me away.

Mommy's belly is getting fat, but you can't really see it here.

These are my cousins who came from New Jersey to see us and play in Central park. I did see them front side too. We spent all day in the park and then had pizza.

I was pretty tired, good thing Daddy was around for naptime.

Aunt Jessie and Daddy decided Mommy should try peking duck for the first time, it was my first time too! Later we had ice cream. Mommy tried to get me to eat pineapple flavor with her, but Aunt Jessie's chocolate was much yummier.

I can't wait to go back!

Ugh

I finally weighed myself this morning and I've gained 12 lbs so far during this pregnancy. Add that to the 7 lbs I gained when I weaned Tessa and I don't even want to think about it.

Bleck. No more McNugget splurges for a while.

Poo in the Potty

Yes this actually happened.

Only because it was a perfect situation her being nakey, standing right next to her potty chair and I was paying attention. I saw what was happening and threw her on the chair. Yay!!

How did Tessa react to her accomplishment? She pointed at it and cried. I read that some kids do this cause they think part of their body has just fallen off or something and they are distressed. So I did lots of cheering and hugging, maybe that will help.

I'm not saying we are officially potty training yet, just experimenting.

Zoo Day

Last Thursday we went to the zoo with Mom, Becky and the boys. I wasn't sure what Tessa would think of the zoo this summer (last summer she was just a little peanut when we went), but she was really into it. She kept pointing at the animals and said 'doggy' alot. She really liked the monkey and the aquarium.

I think Tessa would have been happy to stay in the aquarium all day

kissing cousins at the zoo

Tessa has become a carousel riding expert this summer

We are very excited to be going to NYC this next weekend to see Tessa's Aunt Jessie. Mostly I'm just excited to travel somewhere, it's been a while. Last time Tessa flew she was only 11 months so I better be alot more prepared with toys, books and snacks to keep her still. Wish me luck as I will be flying there alone with her since Jeremy's coming from Canada. Luckily it's a short flight!

Phase 2

As of this week we are now in the second trimester! Wow that snuck up sorta quick. I definitely feel like this pregnancy is going faster, although not knowing the sex will probably make it drag on as time goes by.

I'm feeling great except for a minor incident the other day where I tossed my cookies. Never with either pregnancy have I actually vomited. I gagged on a pill and ended up throwing up my breakfast, how lame is that? I'm calling it a fluke.

We are getting ready to order Tessa new carseat soon as she's outgrown her old one. It amazes me that we are looking at carseats that convert into booster seats, and also that we are shopping for a double stroller at the same time. Wow times are always changing.

since when?!

My local store had a sale on A&W products so I loaded up on some diet cream soda and diet root beer for a nice treat.

I've been chugging these cream sodas, probably two cans a day, for the past week. They are so refreshing and delicious on a hot summer day!

Tonight I sit down with my dinner and frosty cream soda and notice it says 'contains caffeine'. What?! It does? I thought it was caffeine free just like root beer!! Since when does cream soda have caffeine?

So I've been drinking these on top of my daily allowance of pregnancy caffeine, meaning I've been drinking about double what my doctor allows. Great.

More Dancing!

Now we're talking. This is the kind of dancing I've been trying to capture on film. She just happened to be nakey, hope that's not offensive. Don't worry there's nothing showing but a little baby toosh.

You will probably recognize that this is the Sesame Street theme song

Tessa's Favorite "Show"

Tessa loves this local plumbing commercial. She will drop everything to come run in the living room and dance to it. She was dancing more than this but of course I couldn't capture it on film...

Vicious Cycle

This is the vicious cycle we are in:

~ Tessa has a diaper rash so we use our remedies to get rid of it (baking soda baths, nakey time, butt paste and antifungal)
~ Diaper rash clears up and everyone is happy, yay!
~ Tessa eats fruit, any fruit, even the 'mild' fruits like pears or apples
~ Tessa has a big poopy diaper
~ The rash is immediately back as soon as she poops
~ We start over

Argh! She's such a healthy eater I hate to deter her from eating fruit all together. It seems the only safe thing in banana. Today's outbreak was brought on by blueberries. Plus she LOVES fruit and screams for it. She pretty much doesn't ever get juice nowadays, just water and whole milk.

I've switched up our diaper washing routine and I'm SURE they couldn't possibly get any cleaner. They are so clean I would eat off of one. So I know it's not the diapers and since it happens so immediately after her pooping, I'm pretty sure it's related to her diet.

Frustrating!! Help?

Art

Tessa has finally decided that crayons and watercolors aren't so bad after all. She especially likes the painting (probably because it's messier)

Look she's a genius, she even traced her hand :)

Why Tessa prefers doing tubby time with Daddy.....