evan’s seventh heaven

I have to say, this climbing out of the crib thing has been much less of an issue than I originally thought. What’s that banging noise? Why, it’s the sound of me wildly knocking on every wooden surface within reach, of course! But other than that first night, it’s been fairly smooth. Evan’s been going down easy and sleeping at least most of the night without getting up. The last three nights, we haven’t had any wake-ups at all. Whew.

Part of our recent success is due to the fact that we told him if he stayed in his bed all night, we would take him to the golf course. Loosely translated, that means we would take him to a putting green and he could walk around holding various golf balls and using his tiny putter to knock them into the holes from one inch away (he likes to stack the odds in his favor). Have I mentioned his obsession with golf? It is strong. He is always holding a golf ball, sleeping with a golf ball in his hand or talking about playing golf. “I hit golf with Daddy!” is one of his favorite phrases.

So, Saturday morning he woke up after having slept in his bed all night without climbing out. We made a big deal out of it and told him we were going to the golf course right away. By 7:00 a.m., we were at the putting green and Evan was in action, “putting” using his own unique toddler style that more closely resembles shuffleboard than golf. He loved it. It was so much fun that we did it again on Sunday afternoon after yet another night of sleeping in his bed all night. Success!

In other news, I WAS RIGHT. Our current pest infestation is rats… not mice. There are two rat carcasses out there in my yard and the pest control company is coming tomorrow to dispose of them and replace the traps. I could not be more horrified. Ew. Ew. Ew. I know that those of you who know me in person will never again want to come over to my house but I assure you that if you are brave enough to chance it, you can have a golf lesson taught by my own in-house golf prodigy. Plus, I only serve the good wine.

sometimes, life is rough, and you've just gotta have a fudgsicle.

if there was ever a day where I needed caffeine, today was it.

My weekend can best be expressed chronologically in three short sentences:

1. Evan can climb out of a pack & play.
2. We have rats.
3. Evan can climb out of his crib.

As I’m sure is obvious, it was a phenomenal weekend. We went down to my parents’ house for a visit on Saturday night and when we put Evan down to bed in his pack & play, he nonchalantly walked out of the room .06 seconds later clutching his blanket. He was quite pleased with himself. Needless to say, we were not. After several gettings-up and puttings-back-down, we decided that the issue was that the pack & play was too close to the bed, which he was using to vault himself easily out. We fixed that, then he fell asleep and we didn’t see him again until Sunday morning. We thought our problems were solved.

Until “nap time” on Sunday. I use quotes because there was no nap to be had. I put him down, he got back up. I put him down, he got back up. I put him down, he got back up. Ad nauseam. Finally, I gave up in extreme frustration… after all, we were at Grandma’s house and sometimes we let things slide. My husband, ever the optimist, thought that he wouldn’t try to do it at home. I was hopeful.

So, after a napless afternoon, followed by a massively shocking tantrum brought on by said naplessness, he fell asleep for an hour. At 4 pm. Not helpful! Once he woke up, we drove home.

Once we arrived home, I spent the first few minutes cleaning up some things we had left out, straightening up and taking out the trash. Now, we have seen some mysterious animal droppings outside by our trash cans recently, but so far have never spied the animal(s) who left it. When I opened the trash can to drop the bag in, I saw some furtive scurrying. I didn’t get a good look, but the shape and size of the scurrier said one thing to me: RAT. Horrified, I quickly threw the trash into the can and ran back into the house. My heart was pounding.

I was trying to calm myself down but the heebie-jeebies were getting the best of me. After a few minutes I told my husband what I had seen. He worked up the courage to go out there and check it out but didn’t see anything. We decided that the only option is to call the pest control company and get them to come out ASAP.

With nothing more we could do on the rodent situation, we turned our attention to getting Evan fed and bathed. Fortunately, he was really tired and didn’t take long to fall asleep. We thought for sure we were in the clear. We turned in around 10 pm and fell asleep. Then, at 12:49 a.m., I woke up to the sound of small footsteps and saw Evan standing there saying “want to get in Daddy’s bed.” After some stops and starts, we decided the best course of action was to not talk to him or engage with him, but to take him right back to his bed every time he got up. We did that about 10-15 more times and then he cried for a couple of minutes and fell asleep. Victory. (Sort of.) But I’m sure the two hours he spent awake in the middle of the night are not helping his attitude and behavior today.

And did I mention that today is his first day at his new preschool? When it rains, it pours.

i'm blowing up like a balloon over here

I’m having a hard time getting back into the swing of things after coming home from the trip on Monday night. I’m all discombobulated… laundry isn’t done, house is in disarray… but I can’t bring myself to care or really do much about it.

What I do care about is how shocking it is that at only 11 weeks pregnant, I look like I did at 18 weeks last time. My belly is totally out of control and it’s becoming a problem. I was counting on being able to stay in regular pants for a few weeks to come but alarmingly, it looks like that won’t be possible. Today, I’m wearing a pair of “transitional jeans” that I bought a few weeks after Evan was born. I’m worried that they are a short-term stopgap. Where, oh where can I find cute maternity jeans that will not cost me $200? Help meeeeeeeee!

I told a bunch of people at work the big news yesterday. It feels good to have the secret out. And now I can resume my constant snacking on a slightly less furtive basis.

i know she is resting in peace

I got some bad news last Wednesday when I found out that my grandma died. She was my mom’s mom and the only grandparent I’ve ever known. We left on Saturday to go to Missouri for the funeral, and just got back last night. I’m exhausted today.

It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it’s still sad. I am sorry that she never got the chance to meet Evan, and that we didn’t visit very often because of the distance, and that I hadn’t seen her more recently when she passed away.

I realized how much it means to people when you recognize their loss. Sometimes you think it won’t make a difference, because they must have been getting so many comments and hugs and notes from other people… but they notice. My office sent flowers to the funeral home, which I found unexpectedly touching. Then, one of the pallbearers came up to me after the graveside service and asked me if I was her granddaughter. When I said yes, he shook my hand warmly and said with tears in his eyes, “She was a really great lady.”

I was so comforted knowing that she had been surrounded by people who knew and loved her. To me, she was always a somewhat distant figure because of the geography. I knew she loved us. I knew that based on the times we did see her, how she would struggle to hold back tears when we left. And because of how even when she was in her nursing home and not feeling well, that she would look at pictures of Evan and they always made her smile.

On the plus side (if there can be a plus side), there was plenty of family time and good home cooking. Honestly, when was the last time I ate fried chicken, creamed corn and mashed potato and bacon casserole - all in the same meal? My Ozark relatives sure know what’s up when it comes to comfort food. However, I saw about 300% more men wearing overalls than I have ever seen here.

When we drove from Southern Missouri back to St. Louis to catch our flight yesterday, I looked out and tried to soak up the rolling green Ozark hills, the tractors, the small towns and even the men wearing overalls, knowing that I might never be back there again.

sweet relief

I can’t tell you how much better I feel knowing that you all know what I know. The secret-keeping, it was killing me. Whoorl was the only one who knew my secret because when she and I met, we had been planning to go out for martinis for weeks. Having just found out the news two days before we met up, there was no way I could show up at the bar and just pretend that I suddenly didn’t feel like drinking a martini. “Oh, no, vodka-soaked olives sound absolutely DREADFUL right now, I’ll just have a club soda.” Uh, yeah. Not very in character. So, I greeted her and immediately spilled the beans.

I’ve been feeling pretty good. I had a couple of queasy weeks, just like I did the last time, but it seems to be dissipating nicely now that I’m almost 10 weeks along. Even two weeks of minor queasiness makes you feel miserable. I can’t imagine how people with severe nausea cope with it. I would die. As it is, I’m just fine as long as I eat all the time. My key to pregnancy happiness involves multiple breakfasts, at least one of which MUST involve bacon. What can I say, I’ve gotta have the bacon.

In other news, I found a preschool for Evan, and he starts there in a couple of weeks. THAT was stressful. Next on my stress list? Potty training, and moving him into a big bed so the crib will be available for the baby. If I had my way, I’d have him sleep in a crib forever. There’s something to be said for the containment. It comforts me.

OK, so I disappeared off the face of the earth for a while. There's a good reason for it. And I really wanted to title this post "pregnant pause," but for some highly annoying reason, Blogger won't let me add a title. Grrr.

But anyway, yes! That's right: I'm pregnant!

I was all stressed out about saying anything too early, and then I couldn't really imagine continuing to blog about a bunch of other things when I had this very exciting news, and so finally I decided that going public was the right thing to do.

So yay. It's happening. Due date is in early February and we couldn't be happier!