Spring Time Fun

I'm too tired to write eloquently but don't want to get behind on blogging so bear with me.

A couple weeks ago we had the pleasure of meeting up with Michael's childhood best friend Joe, his wife Jenny and their children Sophia and baby Benjamin. This was special for everyone as Joe's assignments and deployments have kept him out of state for the past 15 years and they just moved back to the Puget Sound a couple weeks ago.

We met on a sunny Sunday afternoon at a Mariner's game (they won!) and then went to West Seattle to enjoy fish 'n' chips from Spuds, eaten on a picnic bench on Alki beach. Jenny and I enjoyed watching the grown boys with Harrison and Sophia on the beach, it was a lovely afternoon.

Earlier the same morning, Harrison had some interesting wardrobe choices. I'll let the photos speak but do notice the progression as he adds clothing and accessories.

Snips and snails and puppy-dog tails

It's official, we are having a baby boy! 

Perhaps you say, but Raina, I am not a trained sonogram tech, are we sure this is a boy? Is there any room for error? to which I say to you, nay, this little boy gave us the money shot, the image above is like if you took him and sat him on a copy machine... we are looking from his bottom up and you can't miss the boy parts. I even figured it out a few seconds before she told us the baby is a boy.

Michael, concerned and sweet partner that he is, immediately stroked my hand and comforted (perhaps consoled) me knowing I had hoped for a girl. I do try to keep this blog honest so I will admit I had hoped for a girl but as soon as the initial disappointment passed I embraced the fact that I will remain the only female in a house full of boys... and they will all have to be extra nice to me. Surely they will have some compassion for dear old mom, right?!

Harrison came with us to the appointment and was very interested in the process. He was mesmerized by the gel they spread on my belly and thought the "camera" was funny since it didn't look like any he had ever seen before. Since the images are fairly abstract he really had no idea what he was looking for so within a minute he was sitting in a chair watching a movie on the iPad. We did show him a couple printed images and he correctly pointed out an eye on one, but on another almost identical profile image he pointed to the "eye" on a spot near the back of the head.

As for his reaction to the news on having another little boy, it seems to come across as just another fact to him. He knows we are having a little boy, but that is all he will tell you. He did ask us to name the baby "Peter Pan" which we, um, "put on the list."

Here are some more images to wrap your head around (if you need help they are labeled near the upper left of the image):

Easter 2012

Brace yourself, it was a long weekend! I'll try to keep to the pertinent details.

The Thursday prior to Easter we introduced Harrison to egg dying which he took to enthusiastically. You will notice two large water spots on dad's shirt, that's because a couple of eggs jumped out of the little dipper into the dye before they should have.

But the real Easter planning started in 2011 when my neighbor and I took the kids to the city's Easter egg hunt; we had to go through two rounds of hunts and practically cheat so our kids could get a couple of eggs each and we decided that we could throw our own egg hunt at our park.

Fast forward to two weeks ago and I hadn't done anything when my neighbor called and we said she wanted to do it. We did some quick math and planned on 20 neighborhood kids and I went to the dollar store and bought 300 plastic eggs while she printed out fliers and bought the candy. As we started talking to others on the street, we found out the family closest to the park owned a "small" bouncy house and using Michael's plethora of extension cords we were able to set it up for the big day.

To top it off, another neighbor rented a bunny suit and a rumor went around the block that Michael had volunteered to wear it. Although he didn't really want to do it, Michael donned the suit, causing joy in half the kids and fear in the rest.

Harrison was very excited to see the bunny and was one of the first to give him a hug. He came running back to me and watched as the bunny waved and hugged other kids. After a minute or so, Harrison said that the bunny was "just a man" and he understood that it was a "bunny costume." A few seconds later, a parent made the comment, "why is the Easter bunny wearing shoes" which Harrison overheard and promptly inspected the shoes. A few more seconds later Harrison says, "it's my daddy, it's my daddy!" I shushed him and admitted that it was his daddy (he had noticed sometime before that Michael had gone missing from the party) and begged him to keep the secret.

He thought this was kind of funny but after another minute he actually got a bit scared and began to shake his head and stammered out words saying he didn't want daddy to "come to his home" in that bunny costume. This was a real concern and I had to promise it wouldn't come home and explain to him that dad borrowed it from his friend's mommy. This seemed to pacify him.

For the egg hunt, we divided the park into two sections with easy to find eggs for the little ones and slightly more difficult to find eggs for the older kids. Evidently I underestimated their savvy because the big kids had the park cleared in maybe two minutes.

Harrison awoke us Easter Sunday early in the morning and we went downstairs to a basket from mom and dad, a basket from the Easter bunny and a package from Po Po, Grand Hart and Aunt Chyna. He was so excited for everything he received he was bouncing up and down like a bunny. Even though I tried not to make it Christmas II, it was close enough in his mind.

After church, we let Harrison play at the adjoining playground which was a great way to get out all his wiggles. To his credit, he made it through a solid hour of church making this the first time we haven't had to take him out in the foyer, we were very proud of him. I wish we had gotten a family photo though, we all looked lovely.

The weekend had been mostly sunny and warm(!) so we drove the scenic route through Kirkland and stopped at Carrilon Point. You can't tell from this photo, but the Olympic Mountains were visible and gorgeous. 

Later in the afternoon we went to Grandmama and Zaidy's house for dinner. We brought Harrison's peddle-less bike to show off his awesome skills (I keep meaning to post video...). Dad bought his a new bike with peddles, but he is a bit resistant to learning to peddle so Zaidy pulled his bike out and showed Harrison what fun it is to peddle and ride together with family.

After dinner, Harrison had his own special egg hunt in the living room. He found that grandmama had filled eggs with Disney trading pins (to add to his collection) as well as playdough filled eggs. He also got his third Easter basket of the day which Zaidy filled with a plethora of fund toys including foam airplanes that you shoot with rubber bands.

You may have also noticed the basket Harrison was using to collect eggs, it is the same basket he sat in for his very first Easter picture when he was three months old. What a big boy we have! 

17 Weeks

Everyone says that with your second kid you take fewer photos and celebrate fewer milestones, you're just too busy. If my blog is any indication this is probably true for us. You won't see many posed belly shots taken every few weeks and I probably won't have much to say unless it is something big, for example next week we have our ultrasound that will hopefully tell us if we are having a boy or a girl, check back I will eventually blog about it!

I am 17.5 weeks today and feeling pretty good, aside from the aforementioned insomnia here and there. The first thing I noticed about this pregnancy is that my belly immediately springs forth whenever I eat, making me look more pregnant than I actually am. I had come to peace with this but about 10 days go the belly sprang forth but hasn't recoiled since! What I figured out is my uterus/baby is occupying the lower half of my abdomen and thereby forcing my tummy fat upward creating a rounded bump. The good news is I haven't gained much weight (yet!) so I hope that things will even out eventually. Here is a picture of Harrison from Easter in which you can see a side view of my belly:

At about 15 weeks I realized that I could feel the baby moving around, which was a little weird since I was closer to 22 weeks when I could first feel Harrison kicking. Most of the time I interpret the motions as the baby doing somersaults or turning over "in bed." It is uncomfortable only when the baby seems to push "away" from me which puts pressure right at my waist line of my pants.

We are having family photos taken in a couple weeks and Harrison came to the mall with me to let me look for clothes (15 minutes tops and only with a bribe of playing in the mall afterwards, he's a tough negotiator). This is not his first time in the maternity section with me, but it is the first time he let me take a picture of him with the pillow tummy you can try on. Yes, I know I look rockin' with socks on but the photo is cuter if you kind of compare him to me in the background... drawback of any dress is it makes me look even bigger!

Speaking of shopping with him, I was shopping for jeans a couple weeks ago and Harrison was browsing the adjoining baby section. He picked up a shirt and said, "this is cute mama, I want to get this for my baby." So sweet. I explained to him that we will wait to buy any clothes until we know if we are having a baby boy or a baby girl. I continued shopping for a few more minutes and then noticed he was stuffing that same shirt under our stroller. When I told him he couldn't do that he told me again he wanted it for his baby. When I bent down to remove the shirt from the stroller I found the entire stack of shirts in multiple sizes stuffed under there! He had been putting them in there one by one while I wasn't looking.

Tractor Ride

Last Sunday, we visited Great Papa at Grandmama's house as he is recovering from some serious health issues. We all took a short walk to a neighbor's home to visit their three lamas and on the way we met neighbor Mr. Creek doing work on his property. Harrison noticed some stray golf balls nestled in with the landscaping rocks and asked if he could have one (evidently Mr. Creek likes to hit golf balls in his yard). We chatted with him for awhile and then went on to meet Daniel Boone (that's the name of one of the lamas).

Shortly thereafter, we hard a large engine roar to life and Zaidy said that Mr. Creek just started up his tractor and that he used to give Uncle Stephen and Aunt Rae Ann rides when they were kids. Sure enough he rolls up the drive  and offers Harrison a ride! It is evident that there is not room for mom or dad to ride on this thing and that he will have to sit alone with Mr. Creek which we could tell made him hesitant. Dad popped him up anyway and we walked next to them as Mr. Creek let Harrison "drive" down the street. Eventually they got ahead of us but were getting ready to turn around so I hung back. In those few moments Harrison quickly realized we were not near and before the tractor turned we could hear Harrison crying over the sound of the engine.

The crying stopped once he saw me waving happily at him but it was obvious he was no longer having a good time. Dad got him down and asked him if he had fun, to which he replied by nodding his head yes. Dad asked if he wan't to do it again and the answer was a quiet "no" followed by a hug to hold on for dear life. We thanked Mr. Creek and assured him that in revisionist history, Harrison will likely only remember having a lot of fun driving that tractor.

Nap Time

The irony of the post title is that is suggests sleep, however we are not getting too much of it around here. First of all, at this moment I am writing at 4:48am but I have essentially been awake since 1am with my bi-weekly round of really bad insomnia (much worse than my normal waking up 3 times a night). While there is nothing on tv, it does provide me with time to shop on line and blog in peace and quiet.

As for Harrison, he has starting to show signs he is ready to drop his one midday nap. Most notably is his insistence that he does not want to go to sleep. We prefer to turn a blind eye to this queue and tell him he has to sleep anyway because we haven't met a parent yet that actually encourages their child to stop napping. An hour or two of peace really keeps everyone sane around here.

Last Thursday however, Harrison refused to go to sleep. This wasn't the first time and in the past he agreed to some quiet time in his bedroom and actually did a pretty good job minding this rule for a three year old. On this day however he walked downstairs after 10 minutes in bed to find me and said (in a super saccharine voice, smiling), "I waked up, mom!" He did not accept the premise of my statement when I told him he never fell asleep, instead he told me he wanted to watch a movie with me. I sent him back up stairs. He came down every 5 minutes thereafter getting grumpier when I sent him back up.

Finally, I consented to go upstairs into my bedroom with my laptop thinking my presence on the same floor would appease him. No such luck. He came in every 5 minutes until I was pretty much yelling at him. 50 minutes from his first visit downstairs, I finally relented that this so called "quiet time" was over and we continued our day.

He was a sweet boy the rest of the afternoon until about 6pm. He began to drive me nuts while I made dinner and when dad got home and started playing, Harrison ended up in time out for hitting dad and not apologizing. Clearly a melt down was in the works. He pretty much refused to eat dinner, whined, kept getting out of his seat... in short we were ready to kill him. Instead we got him to bed a good hour early and he fell asleep hard.

I've been warning dad for a few weeks now that non-napping was in the works, and Michael has really been against the idea. I tried to tell him that it really isn't a choice, you can't force kids to nap. I can wean him off it so he sleeps more at night and then can make it through the day without a melt down. That said this was mostly talk on my part, it is only once or maybe twice a week he doesn't want to nap so I continue to put him down each afternoon and cross my fingers.

This happened again on Sunday while dad was home, so he got to witness the melee first hand. As we sat downstairs, Harrison kept leaving his room, stomping his feet on the floor, crying at the top of his lungs. He changed tactics and used every sure fire trick in the book like, "I need to go potty" and "I have a tummy ache" and incredibly "I had a bad dream" - all of which are usually get-out-of-jail-free cards to have a parent give him some love. At the end of the day, we put him to bed early and instead of falling hard asleep, he came out of his room twice (he had never done this before at bedtime) and was awake until pretty much his normal bed time. We were then "rewarded" with a 6am rise time from him, 90 minutes earlier than usual.

Yesterday however we *might* have turned a corner. I put him down around 2:15pm and then I put myself down for a nap. I woke up about 3pm to hear Harrison in the hallway. I asked him, nicely, to come see me and he didn't answer. I persisted and five minutes later he reluctantly came into my room. He told me he hadn't slept and that he wanted to go downstairs. I was actually stunned that he had been quiet in his room for 45 minutes (I even had the monitor on and did not hear him) but on principal I had him crawl into bed with me and rest for a few minutes. After a few minutes I realized he was breathing heavy and when I looked over, sure enough he had fallen asleep in my bed. Unlike other kids, he never sleeps in our bed (he usually starts poking us in the face to wake us up).

I know that was more info that anyone wants to hear about sleep patterns however it is a big deal (to the parents) around here and needed to be preserved via blog. Luckily a non-nap day hasn't yet collided with a Raina-had-insomnia day... oh, heaven help us if it does! As dad remarked, we will have a baby soon and lack of sleep with be the norm. I am already whimpering at the thought...