am i having fun yet?

I turned 13 weeks yesterday, and the day before yesterday, I was still having "morning" sickness. It was after church at night, and let's just say that I didn't make it home. (I DID make it off the road, though.) Also, in the past couple of weeks, I've had the occasional painful stretching of my round ligaments. It's not very fun. And my "belly" still comes and goes. It is there in the evening, but then when I wake up in the morning, it's disappeared again.

I'm ready to move on from all this into the fun part. I want to feel movements. I didn't feel anything with Lydia until over 18 weeks, and have heard that second and beyond babies are felt earlier, but probably not THIS early yet. Movements would be fun, though. The ligament pain... not so much.

Lydia's been two years old for nearly 4 months now, and I just now called to make her appointment for her 2-year visit. We had some... "issues" with our insurance and changes and stuff, but her appointment is now set for Thursday morning. It's so strange to me to go this far between appointments now b/c they were so close together in her first 18 months. The office staff always loves her when we come in, though, as do the other waiting patients. And Lydia, social butterfly that she is, is of course happy to entertain.

a couple of cute things she says

Lydia loves to sing, and she loves me to sing to her. (Well, sometimes she loves me to sing. Other times if I'm singing and she's not in the mood to hear me, she'll say "No sing, mommy." LOL) But she doesn't know about song title, so instead, she will ask me to sing a particular song by phrasing some of the lyrics as a question to me. Like: "ABCDEFG?" or "All around the neighborhood?" (for "This Little Light of Mine") or today's newest installment, "Up the water 'pout?" (for "The Itsy Bitsy Spider.") Then, if she wants to have something or to do something, she'll say "How 'bout...." and then state her request. Like just now, she was hungry for a snack, so she said, "How 'bout some bread?"

But yesterday morning was the funniest thing she'd said in a while. I've been teaching her to ask nicely for things, and to say "May I have a ____ please?" instead of just demanding something with a holler and a single word. She's doing pretty well with it. When she wakes up in the morning, she sits in her bed and talks to herself and laughs and is just in a good mood. Occasionally she'll get a little loud and say things to try to get my attention so she can get out and go play (like "Moooooommmmmmmyyyy, where aaaaaaarrrrreeee yooooouuuuu?" from the other day), but most of the time she just chatters to herself. But yesterday she nearly made me laugh out loud. Several times in a row, she said, "May I have a open-the-door please?" LOL

The pregnancy is moving right along. I still have an occasional day of sickness, but most of the time I feel pretty good. I'm starting to get rather thick, and have gradually started to bring out the maternity clothes, tops only for now, since most of my bottoms are still forgiving enough to allow another week or two of wearing.

the hanging garden of my patio

Not nearly as impressive as I imagine the hanging gardens of Babylon were, I now have a tiny hanging garden on my patio, made of one tomato plant and one cucumber plant. They are hanging upside-down. I succumbed to the sales pitch of this infomercial and hopefully will have some fruits later this summer. The hubby and I hung them up tonight, by wrapping a chain around the support beam of the balcony above ours and then hanging the planters from the chain. They did come with hooks that they could hang from, but after having a hanging kitchen basket full of onions and potatoes fall down out of the ceiling, I'm a little wary of hooks.

I had tried to start my plants from seeds, and all the seeds sprouted, but due to my brown thumb, they all are now lifeless. They grew just enough to use up the energy stored within the seed, but never grew large enough to start producing their own energy. So I bought some slightly larger plants the other day, good-looking ones, that will hopefully remain alive. They have fresh air and sunshine but are sheltered from the rain, so I just need to remember to water them every now and then.

If the plants do well, I will take some pictures later on. If they don't, well then, we shall never speak of this travesty again.

first prenatal appointment

Well, technically it wasn't my "first" prenatal appointment since I did have several of those with Lydia, but it was the first one for this pregnancy. :) We heard the heartbeat and I got weighed (up 5 lbs so far) and filled out some paperwork. The heartbeat was hard to find since I'm still a little early, but she finally found it hiding behind one of MY pulses. My lab work was on a different day and I'm going to have a little bruise from that, but the good news is that I did NOT get lightheaded w/ the needle this time. Usually I do, so I'm glad I got to avoid that feeling.

In Lydia news, she's started saying "Okay" a lot. The tone she uses when she says it is absolutely adorable. She'll say it after Tim or I ask her to do something, but not all the time, otherwise I'd try to get it on video. You'll just have to take my word as to how cute it is. ;)

a moment of realization

Wow. I'm pregnant!

It just sort of hit me yesterday. This feeling is new to me, because with Lydia, the pregnancy was never "real" to me, not even when I was in labor. But maybe because I've gone through it before and know what's to come, it sort of all sunk in yesterday. In about 7 months, I will be a mother of TWO! My "inner child" will become an outer child and I'll get to see if he/she will look like me or be another clone of Tim and Lydia. My belly will get big(ger) and movements will be able to be seen and felt from the inside and out. An amazing journey waits for me and I hope I can cherish every day (instead of dwelling on the unpleasant side effects thus far).

her sense of humor in action

Well, it's a sock instead of a diaper, but putting it in the wrong place got the same reaction as the diaper on the foot would have gotten.