These dreams...

It seem like with this pregnancy, hormones are affecting me in really weird ways. I'm SOOOO much more exhausted than I was with J -- everyone keeps telling me it's because I have a toddler to chase after, but this is the most exhausted I've ever been since...well, since J was a newborn. I can barely make it through the days when I work and don't have the luxury of taking an afternoon nap with J. It doesn't help that suddenly J is waking up every freaking day by 5:30a.m. and that until this week I've been the only doctor at work, but still. I should be able to stay awake past my 3-year-old's bedtime (8pm) but it's really hard. And the past couple of weeks I've had this weird insomnia where I wake up at 2am and then can't...go...back...to...sleep, for at least an hour or two. Then I'm up at 5:30am with Mr. Wakey Wakey and it all starts over...

The strangest part, though, has been the very vivid, and very strange dreams I've been having. For some reason, the majority of the dreams lately have been nightmares or at the very least, very tense. The other day I dreamed that we were at a children's museum-type place with J and a bunch of other kids, and at some point I got separated from TH and J, and then I found TH frantically looking for J, who had gotten lost. It was a horrible dream, it seemed like we were looking for him everywhere, and then we started yelling at each other about whose fault it was that he was missing. I had an even more vivid dream last night that we lived in a really, really big mansion and the power went out, and as TH and I stumbled around looking for candles we heard J falling down the world's longest flight of stairs, but it was so dark we couldn't figure out how to get to him so we had to keep listening to him falling down the stairs...weird.

The only other time in my life that I've had dreams this vivid is when I spent a summer during college in Panama and was taking daily anti-malaria medication. Those dreams were damn near hallucinogenic, they were so real. My dreams lately have been that realistic. This morning, after the J-falling-down-500-stairs dream, when I woke up (at 2am, of course) my heart was racing and my legs were shaking.

Yuck. If I'm going to have super-realistic dreams, why can't they be sexy dreams involving Clive Owen, or Daniel Craig, or even Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs? I'm just saying.

I threw in Daniel Craig because TH and I watched Quantum of Solace the other night and I told him I think Daniel Craig is kind of ugly. This is not exactly the truth. He is a bit weird-looking, but when I see him in 007 movies...yes, please.

3 Year Stats

I can't believe 3 is upon us already--in four days, to be exact, on May 1. I get the feeling this is going to be the theme of all my posts over the next week because I really am shocked at how fast the past year went. J had his 3-year checkup last Friday, and as suspected, he's getting taller and thinner by the day.

Weight: 31.9 lbs (5oth percentile) Weight last year: 30 lbs

Height: 40 in. (97th percentile) Height last year: 36 in.

Head circumference: 99th percentile (I forgot the actual measurement).

That's right. Mr. Beanstalk has grown FOUR INCHES TALLER since last year but only 1.9lbs heavier. It's so funny, because TH and I are both, um, shortish and not exactly thin, so J must be channeling the genes from other family members. He used to be a chubby, round baby, always in the 90+ percentile for weight, until last year. Now he's the kid wearing 4T pants for the length but pinned up in the back so they don't fall off of his skinny little butt. He also has longish feet, right now he's wearing between an 8 and 9 toddler shoe (now THAT he got from Size 13 Daddy).

The pediatrician also mentioned that J has "excellent" verbal skills, which may explain why he's not that interested in potty training right now. He explained that kids can only devote their brains to learning so many things at one time, and if J is in a verbal phase right now, he may not have enough room to process other new skills. This makes sense to me. I was whining to a friend the other day about why is her turning-3-in-May toddler completely potty-trained and mine is nowhere near it? And she said to me that she wasn't surprised because "J can just about recite the encyclopedia already, and my kid doesn't even want to learn the alphabet. Yours has quicker language skills, mine has quicker motor skills." I just never thought about it that way, I guess.

All in all, it was a great appointment. Everything's good, nothing to be concerned about, very healthy and thriving, etc. Since then J has also taken to carrying around his little stethoscope (from an "Animal Doctor" dress-up kit, thankyouverymuch) and putting it on my eyes or chest and saying, "I'm the doctor, I'm going to fix you and make you better." Yesterday he must have remembered the OB appointment last week because he lifted up my shirt and put the stethoscope on my belly, saying, "Let's see what the baby's doing now, ok?"

Of course when I asked him, purely out of curiosity as to what he'd say, "How is the baby going to get out of my tummy?" he responded, "The baby's never coming out. NEVER!" and ran outside.

Let the mom guilt begin.

Today I had a doctor appointment in the morning -- 17 weeks and counting. It's kind of...interesting taking J to OB appointments with me. As soon as we got there, they handed me the little cup and off to the restroom we went. I tried to occupy J with pulling out paper towels and making a huge mess at the sink ("There you go, sweetie, wash your hands!"), but of course he turned around right as I was going, and yelled out, "Why are you going pee-pee in that cup??" so loudly that I heard the nurse behind the little urine-cup-cabinet-thingy snort laughter. Then he kept it up in the waiting room, asking me loudly every couple of minutes about why I was peeing in the cup and what was the doctor going to do with my pee and why? why? why? why? (I sense a new phase upon us).

Then when we got into the exam room, J kind of freaked about me laying on the table, and started pulling on my arm, saying "Get up, Mommy, get up. I wanna go the park. I'm hungry. I need something to eat," but in this frantic way like he thought they were about to do something Very Bad to me. It was cute, he threw himself in front of me and told the med student, saying "Don't touch my Mommy!" while they started ineptly trying to find the baby's heartbeat (Med Student: "Here it is!" Me: "Um, that's me. 70bpm is kinda slow for a fetus." Med Student: "Maybe it's over...here?" Me: "Really? Under my ribs? I'm only 17 weeks, try a little lower.")

By the time we got home, after having lunch with TH and stopping at Target, I was pooped. J wanted to play with his new sandbox so I opened the patio door and let him have at it while I vegged on the couch. He kept coming inside and pulling my arm, telling me, "Mommy, come play with me, pleeeease? Come play with me!" I finally had to tell him (not as nicely as I intended) that I couldn't play with him all the time because I was just too tired. I felt so bad, the way his little face fell. "Okay," he said, and then he kind of dejectedly went back outside and started kicking rocks around. I told TH later, I guess this is a preview of the mom guilt I'll be feeling (heck, I'm already feeling) once we have the new baby. I can't give J undivided attention every second of every day. I'm already giving attention to the baby, before it's even born, and I can tell that J feels the change in the atmosphere. Oh, well, it's not a bad thing, but today was the first time I actually felt guilty about it.

We went to the fair, money was wasted, Easter was great, and now we have another pet.

That's our long weekend in a nutshell. I managed to get a couple extra days off of work which coincided with spring FINALLY arriving in Vegas, so we made the most of it. Although I really enjoyed all the extra family time, I have to say that J's "Almost Three" status was on full display this weekend, in all its lovable, annoying, funny, obnoxious, whiny, cute, frustrating, patience-testing, heart-melting glory. Lord help us over the next year.

***

Friday we woke up to an overcast but warm, breezy day, and TH and I both had the day off. Originally we had a list of things we wanted to do around the house -- pick out paint for the living room, replace the plants in the front yard that didn't survive The Great Vegas Blizzard, sort through J's clothes to separate the now-tiny 3T's from the still-too-big 4T's, etc. etc. All it took was one request from J to kill that plan, though: "Let's do something FUN today!" So we decided to head out to the Clark County Fair, which was about an hour from Vegas but promised lots of "fun." All the way there, J talked non-stop about everything we'd do at the fair: rides, hot dogs, animals, candy, games, animals, lemonade, animals. When we got to the fair our timing was perfect -- we arrived right as everything was opening and the line was short. We had to walk past all of the kiddie rides (and there were alot) to get to the ticket counter, and J was yelling at the top of his lungs the whole way about the rides he couldn't wait to get on: "Look! A train!! I wanna get on the train! Hey that one looks like a balloon! Can I ride it, pleeeeease?" As we passed the rides we noticed that they all cost 1-2 tickets per ride, and figured 20 tickets should be plenty for all of us. So we paid for the little "unlimited rides" hand stamp for J, headed back towards the rides...and HE REFUSED TO GET ON ANYTHING. I don't know what happened. I felt like I was pulling a stubborn mule, he was digging his feet in so hard at the entrance to the rides. "NOOO!!" he started screaming. "I DON'T WANNA GET ON IT!! IT'S TOO SCARY! IT'S TOO LOUD! NOOOOO!" He's in this new "it's scary" phase, which manifests itself in the weirdest places at the weirdest times. It was frustrating, and I hate to admit it, a little embarassing. TH kept gritting his teeth and muttering about "twenty bucks down the drain". Oh, well. We've lost more than that in front of a slot machine, I guess.

***

The rest of the fair actually was pretty fun. J loved loved loved the animals, as he always does. The livestock pavilion was awesome, and it made me wish that we lived in a more rural area so I could get J involved in 4-H. How cool would that be as a kid to raise your own lamb? J also managed to convince TH to waste more money on the midway games, and another $20 later we were the proud owners of two tiny little beanie-baby sized stuffed animal "prizes." We ate until we all felt sick - hot dogs, ice cream, nachos, lemonade, and TH's required giant turkey leg. J even accidentally ate a jalapeno on the nachos, and after sputtering and choking, he said, "Too spicy!! I like it." We watched other kids go on pony rides. Of course there was no way in hell J was getting on a pony ("It's too scary") but he seemed to get a kick out of seeing other kids do it.


The day ended with us playing the one cheap game they had, the one where you throw little ping pong balls into goldfish bowls and if you land one, you get a fish. Amazingly on my first 25-cent try I won. J was shrieking as loud as possible: "I GOT A FISH!! MOMMY GOT A FISH!!!" in that cute way that made it all worthwhile. So that's how we ended up with a goldfish to add to our 2 cats and a dog. J named him "Zach" (?) and he's now living happily in a little tank on our counter, following an emergency stop at Wal-Mart on the way home from the fair to get fish supplies.

Tickets to the fair: $12 for the family
Ride tickets that were completely wasted: $20
More wasted money on rigged games: $20
Goldfish game: $0.25
All the crap required to keep one little goldfish: $20

Quality time and lessons learned about spending money on fickle toddlers: Priceless

Pretty much the funniest picture I've ever taken of J. I said, "Look happy about your fish!" and this was the result.

"Can we have a sheep? Pleeeeease?"

The boy is serious about his ice cream. Just like his mother.






***

Easter was more of the same. We had a blast dying eggs on Saturday night, with surprisingly little mess and only a few broken eggs. It was such an easy and fun project that I may go to the store today for some markdown egg dying kits to use on a rainy day. Easter morning J was super excited for his little basket with a chocolate bunny and dollar-store trinkets. At church that morning he had a little "part" in the children's Easter program, consisting of the following line, rehearsed all week at home like this:


"What color jellybeans are like the sun? YELLOW AND ORANGE!!"


They didn't ask him to yell this last part, but I guess like any good actor he felt that was what the scene needed -- emphasis on the colors! I was all prepared with my little video camera to capture him yelling out his line, but of course...when the time actually came for him to stand up in front of the congregation and say his line, it came out more like this:


(stage whisper into the microphone) "What color is the sun? Yellowandorange."

Then he started whining loudly about wanting jellybeans and was sent to come sit with me in the pew because he was riling up all the other kids, who followed his lead and instead of saying their lines were begging for candy when the microphone was passed to them. That's my boy!

Easter, after the infamous I Want Jellybeans Church Play Fiasco. Really this is just an excuse to show my new hairstyle...not sure if I'm digging the bangs yet. I look like a teacher. (No offense, teachers.)

The finished products.

Toddler-induced egg injuries.




Look at me! I look like a six-year-old!



***


The rest of the weekend consisted of trips to the park, art projects, naps, lots of quality time...and alot of tantrums -- including the first time we've had to cut a shopping trip short and just leave the store due to high-decibel screaming. It was fun. I'm exhausted. J's rear end is wearing a hole in the Time-Out Rug. Why, hello, 3-year-old.

Lazy day at the park.

Once again, looking grown-up.

Just for laughs: This is what J took a picture of when he had the camera. At church. I think TH put him up to it.

Just one more reason we still keep the baby monitor on at night...

Overheard a few minutes ago:

(giggle) "Hey, I just farted."

(more giggling) "I farted again...excuse me!"