Thirteen Things I love about the hubby:

I've talked about the Babe and how I appreciate him with the new baby coming. So today I am honoring the hubby and how much I love him.

1. The way he tries so hard to please me when I'm pregnant. Like one day I will want him to leave our bedroom door open when he leaves then the next I want him to close it!
2. What a huge help he is to me.
3. How much he just listens to me.
4. That he opens doors for me still after 4 years of marriage and almost 2 kids.
5. The way everyday when he walks in the door from work, he'll stop and give me a kiss before he does anything else.
6. How cute he is!
7. The way he keeps pictures of me and the Babe in his wallet to show people.
8. How wonderful of a father he is.
9. How smart he is. He can figure out all these solutions to my sewing problems or whatever.
10. How he tells me I'm beautiful even when I'm pregnant.
11. The cute way he'll do the dishes without being ask to when I'm mad at him.
12. How he rides his bike to work so I can have a car during the day.
13. How he allows me to do anything I want. If today, I want to learn how to knit, he fully supports me. When tomorrow, I want to make a quilt, he says great do it!

Thanks for being such a wonderful husband! I love you so much! I'm sorry this pregnancy has been so hard on us (it doesn't get any better when the baby comes).


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Nesting Syndrome

Yesterday, I woke up full of energy and decided to clean my house. Now when I say clean my house, there is rarely a time when I even want to do the dishes or put in a load of laundry. But yesterday I made a list of 22 things to clean most of which I wouldn't normally clean. These included things like: cleaning out windowsills, washing outside of windows, cleaning out the dreaded junk drawer and polishing the kitchen table. I accomplished 18 out of 22 things! I should get a Mother of the Century Award for that alone. So today I am hoping that was what people describe as nesting syndrome. It's the day before you go into labor where you have all this energy and ready your nest (clean your house). But I was thoroughly disappointed today when I haven't gone into labor. Maybe in order for it to work you have to do everything on your list (including scrubbing the toilets). I guess there are still 10 hours in the day maybe we could still get baby out after all. Yep I think I can feel the contractions already lol.

CPR Certified

Everyone keeps asking how the foster care thing is going. So to update, tonight we went and got CPR Certified which is the last training type thing we need to do. On Thursday, we are going in to turn in all our paperwork and be FBI fingerprinted. Then it takes 4-6 weeks to process all that and then they have to come to our house for a home inspection. Assuming we pass all those requirements, then we are certified and can take children. But right in the middle of this whole process, I am going to have a baby. We won't take any children until things settle down from that. So don't look for anything for a while. But if you stop breathing, then we are both certified to do CPR on you.

New Camera

Today was an exciting day! The hubby got a great big raise! So we went out and bought a new camera! We've been wanting one for a while anyway and with the new baby coming I thought it would be fun to have a better camera. We bought the Canon Powershot A620. Our old camera was 2.0 mega pixels and this one is 7.1 mega pixels! It's been 4 years since we bought the old one so it's a little overdue. If you know anyone who wants an old 2.0 mega pixel digital camera, let us know. I think on ebay they are selling for like $20 or something (probably as an antique). Here's a picture taken with our old camera and same thing with the new!

Playgroup Dynamics

At our playgroup yesterday, we were talking about another playgroup. A while back our playgroup got too big and we decided to split it in halfish. 4 moms came to ours and 3 moms went to theirs. I personally was thrilled because I had some personality conflicts with some of the other moms. I guess this other group recently decided to stop having playgroup all together because the kids were beating each other up. I can understand how putting 5 2-year-olds in a room together would cause some tiffs but beating each other up?

We weren't gossiping about this other group. We were really just saying how happy we were because the dynamics of our group works so well and that we got out of a bad situation before it came down to never having playgroup again. We decided that there is one key thing in making a playgroup work. It's not so much that the children have to all be alike (while one hard child can really mess a group up), it's that the parenting styles have to match. The 4 mothers in our group all are very alike in the big parenting areas like discipline, eating habits and routines. We rarely disagree on things that pertain to parenting and when we do it's ok to disagree. But before we split, I could see that the parenting styles were conflicting enough that people were getting offended because her child did this at my house and mom didn't do X or whatever. Playgroup has been a lot of fun and the Babe has learned a lot from being with the other kids. He looks forward to it every week. The mothers have become great supports to me and we all strengthen each other. It's sad because one of our girls is starting kindergarten next week. So her 2-year-old sister will come alone now. I hope that we can continue to get along while our children grow.

Impatiently Waiting

With only 12ish more days to go in this pregnancy, I am getting a little anxious. But rather than complain, I wanted to post a few things I am a little sad about. I realized today that this is the last 2 weeks of the Babe being an only child. Which some would say is a good thing, but I realize that after this new one comes I will no longer be able to give him my undivided attention all the time. I will no longer be able to think only about what we are going to do with him all the time. My thoughts and time will be split between 2 children. Of course I've heard how other mothers don't understand how they can love the 2nd child as much as the first only to realize after the birth that they can. But not being to the 'after the birth' part of that I still don't understand. And the poor Babe has no idea what he's in for. I mean sure we've told him that mommy is going to have a baby and he'll be a big brother. But he doesn't understand what that really means.

The other thing I realized is he will now have to share everything. Today I was cleaning out a cupboard that was a mess full of the Babe's sippy cups and old bottles. I threw out a bunch of junk but then decided to use half the cupboard for the new baby and the other half for the Babe's stuff. This is just one example of things he'll have to share. Now I'm not against him learning to share but I feel for the poor kid.

On the brighter side, he will have a sister; and anyone who has a sibling knows that there forms a relationship that can only form by living with another person and growing up together. It's unique in that you develop memories together and the memories you chose to remember differ by personality. There are always situations that are funnier or sadder or happier because of some experience you had together with your sibling. This may not be the case in all families but I think in most. My brothers have memories of my birth (or lack of because they were sent outside) and perhaps the Babe will have memories of his sister being born.

As a child, nobody ever told me that the best part about parenting is watching your children grow. I think the new baby will help the Babe grow from a baby to a boy and I'm excited to see that happen.

Living on an Exotic Island

I am finishing up reading the book Robinson Crusoe for the first time ever. I think it's an interesting read. The back kind of helped me with my post and my expectations of the book. It says something like, "We've all had thoughts of living on an exotic island and how we would deal with it." Here's a book that describes some guy's ideas about what he would do, I'm guessing (because it's fiction).

While reading, I have found a few things about my ideas of living on an exotic island. 1st, and most importantly, I could not do it without the hubby. As a woman, I think I would die because I don't have the physical strength that men natural have. The fact that this man is completely alone would also I think drive me crazy to the point where one day I'd just lay down and die.

By nature, I think I am very much like the character in the book though. He sees a need or want (which his wants I consider needs) and sets his mind to fulfilling it. I am very much the same way in my life. If I want to learn how to sew, I go to the library and check out a book on sewing or google it until I can figure it out. And with time he gets better at all the things that he accomplishes. I am the same way. Over the years I have been sewing, I have become more confident and a lot of comfortable making things.

I am not finished yet and am sure to be disappointed with the ending. But being 100 pages from the end, I can already say it has been a good days read and has been a good thought provoking read. Of course, I have seen the many movies that are spin offs of this novel (e.g. Swiss Family Robinson or Cast Away) but am/have thoroughly enjoyed this version.

Somebody likes me!

Today I have some exciting news! Somebody actually likes me! Today I found another mommy blog that has my blog linked to it on her links list! The blog is called Mothers on the Verge and I have her linked on my sidebar. I guess it doesn't take much to get me excited.

Foster Care Training Recap

Today we finished our last part of the foster care training for a while. We still have a few more classes that we have to take but we have a year to do it so we'll wait a while to do those. But today we spent 9 hours there and by the end the hubby was done! The training has been very interesting! Nothing life changing or new but a few things that I hadn't thought about before. Today they wanted us to pose the question to our extended family (who are the primary readers of this) of what their feelings would be if we were to foster an African American child? We hadn't thought of this because we have no problems with this but some people have pretty strong ideas about this. And in some cases, the extended family would not accept an African American child into their family. I don't think this is the case with either of our families but you never know. But we'll probably follow up this post with the question directly just make sure. Apparently a LOT of the child that are in the system here in Vegas are African American. We even had a lesson on African American hair care (which I was thankful for because I had no idea how to take care of their hair). We really felt grateful today that we both have come from good families and we think that our family situation would be one where these children could have a positive family experience.

Thirteen Things I'm excited about the new baby that's coming:
1. Pink! Pink everything!
2. Non-stinky diapers, well at least for a while.
3. Dresses, bows, lace and other frillies.
4. Cuddling. Newborns will you let you hold them and kiss them and cuddle them forever!
5. The way newborns naturally hold your finger.
6. Tiny feet and fingers.
7. Doing her hair. Although, I have mixed feelings about this. I don't do my son's hair so what if I forget.
8. Painting her fingernails and toenails.
9. That new baby smell.
10. How newborns just kick their legs all the time.
11. Bundling her up at night.
12. The moment the doctor says that she is healthy and that she has all her fingers and toes.
13. Watching her grow and learn. Nobody ever told me that this is the best part of being a parent. Sure my 2 1/2 year old is still growing and learning every day but those baby milestones are fun (e.g. crawling, walking, talking ect.)


Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1. Norma
2. Carmen
3. Kimba
4. Courtney
5. Susan
6. Pixie Princess Mom
7. Titanium
8. The Momma