Hello, Third Trimester!

Wow, these things really sneak up on you when you're busy chasing two little kids!  But, yippee, we made it to 27 weeks and Eyeball and I are doing great!  I had my last official appointment at the perinatal clinic this week.  It ended with a big hug from my doctor (who was also my doctor when I was pregnant with Amelia).  My cervix, fluid levels, and baby are all measuring right on track.  They estimated Eyeball's weight at 2lbs 4oz, the 49th percentile.  Which is great, except that my belly's measuring bigger and I've gained more weight than with either of my previous two pregnancies.  I was sorta hoping to blame some of that on the baby, but I guess it's all me.  Oh well, I love this part of pregnancy.  Hopefully, Eyeball will cooperate and give me a nice long third trimester.  Now I just need to get through the rest of my shots - 9 down, 9 to go! 

How am I kicking off the third trimester, you may be wondering?  By knocking off a few items on my to do list.  Jeff, brave soul that he is, took the kids camping at Mt. Rainier tonight, so I could have some alone time with my cleaning supplies.  Now that the kids' room is done, it's time to tackle the upstairs.  I had Jeff move some furniture before he left, so I could do some deep cleaning (I've promised not to move anything by myself, and I've been very good so far).  So far, I removed everything from our 'closet' and vacuumed/dusted places that haven't seen the light of day in years.  I found fewer dead spiders than I expected to, but more vomit stains (Ewww!).  I'm trying to remember the last time someone threw up down the back of our bed, and I'm thinking it was Marley.  When he was one (Ewww!).

Anyway, I tried to take a belly shot since I was posting about the pregnancy, but found it pretty much impossible to do with my iPhone.  So, instead I'll leave you with a picture of my "progress" upstairs.

Yikes!  I'd better get back to work!

Two Years Old, a little late

Okay, so I had this post nearly complete (including pictures!) since Amelia's birthday two months ago.  But, for some reason I just never got around to finishing it.  Now, I don't even remember what it was that I wanted to add.  Oh well, here she is, in all her two-year-old glory.

*Knows most of her colors, a few letters, tons of songs, and can count to 12 (usually) accurately.

*Is still as stubborn as ever!  The other day Jeff was reading with her.  She insisted that a picture of prairie dogs were actually seals.  Nothing could convince her otherwise, not even the fact that they were popping their heads out of holes in the ground.  Marley gets particularly frustrated by this trait, since he's usually the one trying to convince her she's wrong about something.

She loves the Mariner Moose.  Hugging him is always the highlight of the game for her.

*Enjoys playing alone at least half the time.  Marley has a hard time with this one, too, since he enjoys playing alone about 1% of the time.  He's always complaining to me that, "I want to play with someone but Amelia wants to play by herself!"

*Has a BIG imagination.  She loves her doll house and playing with the family in it.  Her other favorite thing to do is play with sticker scenes.  She will arrange and rearrange those things until the stickers have lost all their stick.

*Picks out her own outfit every day.  LOVES to dress up.  Kind of like her big brother at that age.

*Favorite foods include: oranges, edamame, meatballs, sausage, hummus, grapes, and ice cream.

Yes, we gave her a leftover piece of cake topped with tea light candles on her birthday.  She didn't seem to mind.

*At her 2 year check up was: 25lb 12oz (36th percentile) and 35" (78th percentile)

*Wears big girl undies, except for nap (when we're lucky enough for that to happen!) and bed time.  Pees in the potty almost every time.  Does not poop in the potty.  Ever.  But, does let us know when she has to go so we can put a diaper on her.

*Has LOTS to say, and a good memory for retelling events.  Is usually pretty easy to understand, but has a few funny pronunciations: House=Hee-ouse, Hat=Hee-at, Owie=Ee-owie, Down=Dee-own, Marley=Mah-ee (this has changed in the last two months.  She now says My-wee).  "K/C" often sounds like "T".  This is especially cute when she sings, "I'm a wittle too too tock.  Too too!  Too too!"  I also never tire of hearing her say "O-tay"

*Has to be the cutest, smartest, funniest little girl I've ever met!

After

Marley and Amelia's room is officially up and running! They've been sleeping in there for about two weeks now and are doing really well in their new beds. A couple nights ago they both slept for 12 hours straight - without a single peep all night long! The downside of room sharing is that if one wakes up, they are pretty much guaranteed to wake the other. This is usually Amelia waking Marley. On the plus side, she is now waking him instead of me, and he is a much better sport about it than I ever was. Often they will even play, read, or just lay together for a bit before coming to get me.  This can go on for minutes at a time!  Overall, I'm pretty happy with the new arrangements and how the room turned out.

Amelia's bed, on the left, Marley's loft bed, and the dresser.

The stairs to the loft have really large drawers, which we've used to store dress up accessories, games/puzzles, blocks, and a few other random toys.  Almost all of their clothing can fit in the new dresser.  It's a little crowded, but it should work alright if we rotate out-of-season clothing.  I plan to add a small nightstand with a few items that didn't fit in the dresser.  I'm not really happy with the toys at the foot of Amelia's bed.  There is a large bin of dress up clothes and another bin of stuffed animals and dolls.  I'd love to find another place for the dolls and add hooks to the loft for hanging dress up stuff.

Amelia's bed with storage underneath.

The drawers under Amelia's bed hold puzzles, art supplies, and hot wheels cars/tracks.  Her headboard stores tons of books.  We were a little worried about Marley not having any place to set things in his bed.  I love how he figured out how to hook his nighttime water on the railing of the loft.  I guess there's not really much else he needs access to in the middle of the night.

Toy storage under the loft, front of the dresser.

I really love the cube storage unit.  It holds a lot and the kids know exactly which bin holds which kind of toy.  Almost all of our toys are shared, but each of them are allowed to have one 'special' bin of toys that they don't have to share (the frog for Marley and the hippo for Amelia).  You'd be surprised at how little they put in their special bins.

One more space to fill.

This is a pretty small room, so we can't let any space go to waste. I plan to build some shelves in this one foot wide area between the stairs and the wall to store a few large toys that didn't fit anywhere else.

I should have taken more pictures of our living room after we moved everything back in.  We're back to games and books filling the shelves, with just a couple of large toys on the floor.  What an improvement!  I'm pretty sure there was a noticeable decrease in my blood pressure, too.

And to think, I get to enjoy three more months of my own quiet bedroom before Eyeball joins us!

Toys

Toys.

Toys.

And more toys.

A few years ago when our friends Adam and Kristina were visiting, they marveled at how "normal" our house looked. We had a few small bins of toys on the book shelf, along with several books. And that was it. Their daughter is now about the same age as Marley was then. Perhaps, like we were, they are still feeling pretty good about the state of their home.


Since that visit, we've added another child, had six Christmas's, six birthdays, and countless "just because" gifts. Our children are very lucky to have so many people who adore them so much.  But, with so many overflowing bins, buckets, and shelves, we are in desperate need of a purge. 

The problem is that Marley and Amelia have cataloged every single item in their little brains.  They have a sixth sense about their toys, and somehow know the exact moment something goes missing.  And so I spend my time trying to create more space by getting rid of my own stuff.

Adam and Kristina - you should just start boxing up all of your stuff now.  The toy take over is inevitable.  Don't fight it.