Sleepless in Sarasota

We're coming up on the three week mark as a family of four. I've come to the conclusion that little Todd isn't fully human. In fact, I'm beginning think he is part dinosaur. Pterodactyl to be exact because I've seen Jurassic Park and Todd sounds just like the pterodactyls. Those are the winged dinosaurs that fly around and squawk. I'll be able to confirm that he is indeed part pterodactyl once I do the research and determine if pterodactyls are nocturnal because Todd, Todd grunts and squeals like nobody's business between the hours of 2am to 6am. He doesn't necessarily cry, but with the racket that he makes he might as well. So other than having his days and nights extremely mixed up and the fact that I haven't slept longer than a 2 hour increment in almost three weeks we are doing well. Brian started back to work on Monday and so far I have made it through two days at home alone with two kids and somehow we've even still managed to make it to Hayley's daily swim lesson. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not very pleasant however. I don't do well with little sleep so fair warning to all who cross my path for the next few weeks. When I was pregnant, I had eliminated caffeine from my diet, a habit I had hoped to continue postpartum. Of course reality has set in and with a toddler named Hurricane and my nocturnal dinosaur I'm now in the process of petitioning Starbucks to open a location closer to my home. So much for good intentions!

We've had several comments that Todd looks like his Daddy. Sigh. Yes, he does. I'm hoping to get some of Brian's baby pics scanned to compare to Todd. So to recap, currently Hayley is the spitting image of her Dad when he was about three and Todd looks just like Brian did as a newborn. I'm 0 for 2. I am pretty sure they are mine, but I am starting to wonder!

While Brian was at home last week we managed to finish up a project we had started before Todd was born. Brian's Dad found a used Power Wheels jeep in someone's trash. He got a new battery and Brian and I renovated the jeep for Hayley's upcoming second birthday. Yep, we "pimped her ride!"

Week 1

We successfully made it through our first week with TWO children. Truthfully, a day with Hayley can be like parenting two children (sometimes named Jekyll and Hyde) so in a way we are parents of three! Lucky for us though, Todd seems to be quite different then his big sister. He rarely fusses and so far appears to be very laid back. Our only complaint is that he seems to have his days and nights mixed up... boy do we miss sleeping!

Hayley has done better than we expected adjusting to life with a sibling. She's been VERY attached to Daddy though so it will be interesting to see how things go next week when Brian returns to work. For now we're just trying to enjoy each day together as a family. We've spent several days at the park trying to burn off Hayley's excess energy. Todd enjoys the outdoors and it's keeping us from getting cabin fever.

Below are some pictures of Todd and Hayley from his first week of life.

We'd like you to meet...

...Todd Michael Roberts who entered the world at 3:53pm on Friday, April 11th, 2008. Todd weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces and was 20.25 inches long.

On Friday morning, I went to my scheduled 39 week Dr. visit to find out my blood pressure was elevated. I was sent to the hospital for another blood pressure check and some labs. Upon arriving at the hospital I was told they were going to induce me, which I adamantly did not want. Upon hooking me up to all the monitors though we realized that I was actually almost 4 cm dilated and having fairly regular contractions which I just wasn't feeling. Aware of my previously fast labor and my elevated blood pressure, the Dr. decided to keep me at the hospital, break my water, and get labor really going. Obviously the good Lord was taking care of us because I ended up going from 5 cm dilated to fully dilated in a time span of 30 minutes. I could have been in real trouble had I not had an appointment with the Dr. that day and thankfully Brian was there in plenty of time after driving back from Tampa.

We are "almost" all home from the hospital as Hayley will return from her stay with Nana and Papa later this afternoon. She did visit us in the hospital and say "baby" while pointing at Todd, but then went back to running around like a wild woman so it will be interesting to see her reaction to our new, permanent family member. Obviously we are proud parents and in complete adoration of our new little boy. So far he has been the complete opposite of Hayley as a newborn. He sleeps, rarely fusses, and is content being held. We aren't quite holding our breaths, but do have some hope that he may be "laid back." Oh, and he has hair! A reward for all that indigestion I had to put up with!

Obviously more updates and pictures will be forthcoming!

Expanding vocabulary or potty mouth?

I'm still pregnant. And as much as I'm physically ready to not be pregnant, I think emotionally I'm actually kind of glad to still be pregnant. It's not that I'm not excited to meet our new family member, but rather that the significant life change that is about to occur is just beginning to hit me. For almost two years Brian and I have showered just about every ounce of our attention on our precious little girl and the thought that we'll soon be dividing our attention is somewhat heartbreaking for me. I know that providing Hayley with a sibling will be a wonderful thing, but in the emotional haze that these remaining weeks of pregnancy have left me in, I'm still trying to convince myself that I'm not betraying our little girl.

I've been told that toddlers are much more perceptive and understand much more than we think. If that's the case, then I'm certain that Hayley knows life is about to change in a big way for her. In the past week she has given me a very strong introduction to why they're called the "terrible twos." Tantrums have been a daily occurrence in our household and I consider it a good day if we make it through with just one meltdown. Thank goodness she's cute.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that just being cute is going to help either of us out with Hayley's most recent quandry. My daughter is fascinated with all things transportation oriented. Trains, planes, boats, cars, motorcycles, tractors, trucks (particularly trucks). (You didn't expect her to be interested in dolls and princesses did you?) Hayley knows what each of these modes of transportation are and she'll tell you when she sees one along with make the sound that each one makes. Yep, I should be proud of my little scholar. The problem is with her pronounciation. Hayley has problems getting that "tr" sound out and instead makes an "f" sound so train becomes "fain" and truck becomes... well, you get my drift. We can't take a car ride without my not quite two year old yelling a series of what most people would consider to be expletives in the backseat. Although the weather is nice I don't dare roll down my windows and let the fresh air in. I live in fear... never knowing when Hayley is going to see a "truck."

Dear Tenant,

This letter serves as a formal reminder that your tenancy of the herein described premises will end on April 17th, 2008. You have been allowed to reside rent free for the past ten months and during this time the Landlord has graciously expanded the "building" for you. However, the Landlord is quite certain that any additional expansions will cause significant damage to the structure. It is clear that your needs have outgrown your existing quarters and the Landlord is adamant that it is time for you to "move on out," so to speak.

Despite the backaches, permanent aversion to certain foods, stretch marks, indigestion, and other assorted "damages" incurred by your tenancy, the Landlord has happily prepared new living quarters for you. However, the Landlord has stated that it will be unacceptable for you to kick the walls of your new residence as you seem to be accustomed to doing.

Should you fail or refuse to vacate said premises by the agreed upon date of lease termination, the Landlord WILL take actions not limited to the use of pineapple, walking, and red raspberry leaf tea to evict you from the premises.

Now, start packing!

Love,
The Landlord

Sign of the Gemini

For two people who have just about every aspect of their lives planned out on a spreadsheet, it's apparent that we never consulted the stars upon deciding when to bear our "fruits." The other day I got one of those forwarded emails going around describing zodiac signs. Usually I laugh these things off, but Hayley's description was pretty accurate.

GEMINI - The Chatterbox (May 21 - June 20) Smart and witty. Outgoing, very chatty. Lively, energetic. Adaptable But needs to express themselves. Argumentative and outspoken. Like change. Versatile. Busy, sometimes nervous and tense. Gossips. May seem superficial or inconsistent. Beautiful physically and mentally.

Which led me to peek at what we expect Frog Prince's zodiac sign to be.

ARIES - The Daredevil (Mar 21 - April 19)
Energetic. Adventurous and spontaneous. Confident and enthusiastic. Fun. Loves a challenge. EXTREMELY impatient. Sometimes selfish. Short fuse. (Easily angered.) Lively, passionate, and sharp wit. Outgoing. Lose interest quickly - easily bored. Egotistical. Courageous and assertive.

I.Am.In.TROUBLE!!!!

We finished up another round of Hayley's swim lessons on Friday. We did figure out that part of Hayley's protests in the water have a lot to do with the temperature. This is one little girl who DOES NOT like to be cold. The pool temperature for lessons is kept at 88 degrees, but we've had several rather cool mornings here that have been in the sixties. We went to a few noon time lessons to see if temperatures close to 80 degrees made a difference in Hayley's attitude and she was a completely different student. Who can blame her distaste for the cold weather though? It's not like she has ANY meat on her little bones and neither Brian nor I passed on any genetic adaptation to cold weather. We're planning on continuing with just a weekly swim lesson for the rest of the summer. Hopefully we'll be able to keep Hayley in the pool quite a bit this summer and she'll get this whole swim/float thing mastered.

Happy Easter!

Hayley has had a busy Easter weekend We had a family dinner on Saturday evening and Hayley certainly enjoyed having so many people to entertain. We attended church service Sunday morning and Hayley got to show off her Easter dress. Apparently it was well received which was a problem for Hayley. She looked so cute in her dress that one little boy in the church nursery decided to hug her a little bit harder than she liked. She was in tears when we picked her up but Daddy reassured Hayley that getting upset because a boy hugged her is exactly what she is supposed to do! We returned home for an Easter egg hunt. Hayley surprised us an was actually really interested in hunting for the eggs. She'd find one, and then look up at us and ask "more?" She did a VERY good job of finding all the "hidden" eggs!

Pictures of our day:

Easter_2008

Here's some video of Hayley playing with the puzzle the bunny man brought her!

I'm getting a little nervous

Paranoid may be the better term to use. As I prepare for my second go round, I'm more nervous about labor and delivery then I ever was while pregnant with Hayley. With Hayley, I didn't know what to expect and in a way that was a good thing. With Frog Prince, I have an idea of what to expect and that is where the problem lies.

My labor with Hayley was really fairly "easy" (as easy as labor and delivery can be, right girls?) On the day of Hayley's birth, I woke up at 4:30am with some mild stomach pains that I really didn't think could be labor. I'd never had Braxton Hicks contractions so I thought that perhaps maybe that was what was going on. However, I was exactly 40 weeks pregnant and ready to reclaim my body and so I did all those things that I heard were supposed to get labor going. I walked Chloe, I pulled weeds, I cleaned up around the house. Still, no pattern to my contractions. By 11am I had 1 or 2 fairly painful contractions and I told Brian that perhaps we should just go down to the hospital to be on the safe side. When we got to the hospital at 11:30am I was 4 cm dilated. By 1:40pm I was fully dilated and we were waiting for my epidural to take effect so I could start pushing. Hayley was born at 2:01pm.

Obviously, I had a quick labor. Which was wonderful. But, that is also the source of my current concern. I keep hearing that second labors are usually much shorter than first labors and quite frankly I'm not the least bit interested in redeeming my 15 minutes of fame by having a newspaper article written about the woman who birthed her baby at home with the help of her toddler and trusty Shih Tzu. I'm into the au natural thing and even considered a natural birth (for about a day) but really, I want NEED my epidural!

On the flip side, I could be one of those anomalies where my second labor is longer and more drawn out then my first. Oh wait, that doesn't sound appealing either!!! Add that to the anxiety that is wreaking havoc on my Type A personality over the fact that I don't know exactly when this baby will come and I'm a paranoid ball of nerves. You can see I'm in quite the conundrum. If I don't blog for awhile, it's because I've gotten all too stressed out about this and have decided to setup a tent to live in the hospital parking lot.

Change of Heart

So after a miraculous and speedy recovery from the flu, Hayley returned to swim lessons on Monday. I'm thinking she must have really felt badly over the weekend because there is no other explanation for the sudden change in her attitude towards swim lessons. For the past two weeks, Hayley has been fit to be tied during each lesson. She's not uncomfortable and it's not that she's scared of the water. It's that SHE isn't getting to do what SHE wants to do... and so she screams. But on Monday, Hayley squealed with delight the entire time she was in the water.
Yes, I am talking about Hayley Roberts. Her excitement over swimming has continued throughout the week and she is now dragging me out of the house in the morning. So maybe it's an appreciation for the little things in life like feeling well enough to go to a simple swim lesson. Or, perhaps she just came to the realization that she looks so darn good in a swimsuit that she'd better learn to swim so she can wear a swimsuit more often. Either way I'll take it.

DEFCON 1

Alert Homeland Security. Our perimeter has been breached. Hayley has become the not so proud recipient of influenza. We had a normal day on Thursday with the routine afternoon nap. But when she woke up at her usual time she was burning up with a 103 degree fever. After a bit of Tylenol and a cool bath, her temp came back down and we had a relatively normal dinner. I thought perhaps she's just battling a virus and off to bed she went like usual. Until about 9pm when we heard her coughing and ran to her room to find her and her bed covered in... why didn't anybody tell me that kids throw up??!!! (Oh goodie, looks like I've earned the coveted vomit badge to add to my Mommy Vest.) Brian assumed the role of combat medic and I took over as combat surgeon. We made the decision to MEDEVAC Hayley to the tub. Hayley refused to let go of Pooh who was severely injured in the blast. Froggy was in bad shape as well, but apparently Hayley doesn't follow that "no man left behind" motto. Once we cleaned up Hayley's battle wounds we were better able to assess her condition and see the full extent of her injuries. Once again, her fever was back up to 104 and we were seriously considering MEDEVACing Hayley to the ER. I have to admit, we've known there would be war, but we probably haven't trained properly and certainly had never experienced this type of warfare before. Dare I say we were a bit unprepared and may have PANICKED??!! We opted for our next line of defense, the on-call Pediatrician who gave us some advice on getting Hayley's fever down and telling us when an ER visit would truly be appropriate. It took about 2 hours, but we finally lowered her temp to the point that she was comfortable and able to get some rest. She battled the fever all night as we monitored our patient with frequent temperature checks and Tylenol doses. Friday morning I packed Hayley up and we headed down to the Dr. for a nasal swab that confirmed that Hayley had indeed contracted the flu.

We know a few people who have battled this strain of flu this year and from what the Dr. told us to expect, we really were expecting a very unpleasant week. So far though, Hayley has shocked us as her fever has been absent since last night, she shows no other symptoms besides maybe the hint of a runny nose, and has been running around the house all day long like nothing ever happened. I've been spending the past two days armed with Lysol trying to decontaminate the house and praying that Brian's and my immune system can fight off the threat. I've even contemplated bathing in Emergen-C, because quite frankly, being 34 weeks pregnant with the flu is not something that I have any desire to experience. So I'm going to call this battle a draw. Obviously I lost the battle because somehow Hayley ended up with the flu. But, because of her strong immune system, which I'm choosing to believe that good nutrition and sleep played a part in, she successfully fought off the foreign invader.

And yes, I keep score of these battles. I HATE being sick and therefore I HATE germs. It's a personal mission of mine to keep my family and myself healthy so a germ invasion resulting in illness is like a personal failure to me. Now that we have one walking petri dish and another on the way, I'm going to have to step up my germ warfare readiness even further. I thereby declare that this household will remain at DEFCON 3 for the foreseeable future.

Oh, and because I know you're probably concerned, thanks to my "expert" surgical/laundromat skills, both Pooh and Froggy were awarded a Purple Heart for their brave sacrifice. They have made a full recovery and have returned to Sergeant Hayley's platoon.

Weekend Recovery

After a busy weekend we are slowly recovering and getting back into the swing (or swim) of things. Hayley spent Friday night at Nana and Papa's so Mommy and Daddy could participate in the community garage sale and unload the several boxes of "treasures" that we have been carting around since our college days. Brian and I had made a pact that whatever didn't sell would be donated and so we priced accordingly. We had a successful day and I'm greatly relieved to have rid ourselves of this excess baggage. Now we have room in the garage for all the new "rides" we seem to be quickly accumulating. Between the wagon, multiple strollers, and miscellaneous kid gear I'm beginning to think we should have built a four car garage.

On Sunday we decided to take a family trip out to Lido Key and let Hayley have some beach time. We live just minutes from the Gulf and don't take advantage of the beach nearly as often as we should as this is the first time Hayley has been to the beach since she could walk. It took us awhile to get across the bridge as the Sarasota Marathon was underway. I thought about the irony... last year at this time I had made it my goal to train for this year's half marathon. Looks like now I'll have an additional training partner to get my buns in gear for next year.

Unbeknownst to us, Hayley knew it was race day. I'm not quite sure why Brian and I thought that Hayley would be happy to just sit and play in the sand. Why on earth would ANYBODY (particularly Hayley) sit and relax on the beach when there are seagulls to chase, people to talk to, and lots of places to explore. Hayley ran for forty five minutes straight and only stopped because we couldn't take anymore beach bootcamp so we packed up and called it a morning. Due to the fact that Hayley can now outrun my waddle, I got to be on camera duty and Brian was the lucky recipient of Hayley's intense cardio workout.

Yesterday we resumed the ISR swim lessons that Hayley began last summer. She has retained a lot of the skills she learned last summer which is great, but let's just say that we've still got some challenges ahead of us. More on this to come.

Lost in Translation

Hayley has been talking up a storm lately. I know she must think we're dense when she tells us this big long story and we just say, "uh... yeah... that's right." A conversation with Hayley is like speaking to someone who speaks a different language. You have NO IDEA what they're saying but occasionally you hear an English word that you know. Such was storytime with Daddy last night as Hayley told us all about Corduroy and his Easter egg hunt. All we know is that she had a lot to say about the wab-beet (translation: rabbit) and the egg.

Privacy? Ha!

I went to get Hayley out of bed this morning and the moment I opened the door she promptly yelled "Monkey!" and pointed at the monkey on her border. She's never actually said the word monkey before, so I wasn't aware that she actually knew what a monkey was. Usually when I get her up in the morning I say something to the effect like "How'd my little monkey sleep?" Apparently she wanted to make it clear to me that she is not the monkey! She then said "sheep" and pointed to the zebra. Guess we'll keep working on animals.

So after Hayley's breakfast I headed off to take a shower. Usually Hayley will sit in the family room and watch an episode of Pinky Dinky Doo while I get ready. Of course today she must have been feeling her oats because she decided to take advantage of my helpless condition. I'd gotten my hair lathered up with shampoo when Hayley came running into the bathroom with a mischievous look on her face yelling "tower, tower." (I've long given up on ANY expectation of privacy ANYWHERE in the bathroom!) At first I thought she was saying "towel," but then she said, "Pooh, tower" and the next thing I knew, Pooh was in the shower with me! "Oh, she's saying SHOWER!!!" I pulled a wet Pooh out from under my feet and told Hayley that Pooh didn't need a shower, he'd just had a bath last week. She smiled and ran out of the bathroom. Moments later she was back with "that" look on her face. She grabbed the towels that were right next to the shower (you know, the ones I'd placed there to towel off with) and took off down the hallway towards the bedroom door where she dropped the towels and ran back into the family room.

As I dripped my way to my misplaced towels I wondered to myself how I'm ever going to survive when Hayley's partner in crime gets here. It doesn't look good for me so far.

The Big Slide

We spent Saturday back out at the strawberry patch picking strawberries. They had a "deal" going and we ended up with five pounds of berry goodness to bring home. You'd think that five pounds of strawberries would overwhelm us, but we seem to have made a pretty good dent in them. If we look a little red in future pictures, you'll know why!
Today we took Hayley over to the park for some playtime. Brian had told me that he had been letting Hayley go down the "big" slide by herself. I rolled my eyes at him thinking, "of course she's big enough to handle the big slide." That was until Friday when I took Hayley to the park by myself and about had a heart attack when she scampered up the jungle gym to get to that big slide. It really is a BIG slide! I grabbed her before she could head down and took her to the slide that is more age appropriate. Of course today, with Daddy there, I felt a little more courageous and watched as my fearless babe headed down that big slide all by herself! My little girl is growing so fast!
The "Big" slide
Climbing up the jungle gym
An action shot
Some video of Hayley going down the little slide

Another night of blissful slumber...

in her new bed! If only I could sleep this good!

Not to count our chickens...

...but we "think" our little princess may have flawlessly made the transition to her big girl bed! Over the past few weeks we've been preparing Hayley's new room. She will eventually share this room with little brother and the nursery will become their play room, but for the next year or so, it is all Hayley's. Brian and I spent a weekend painting and putting up a new border for her. Last weekend we moved her crib into her new big girl bedroom and for the past week she has been sleeping in her new room all in preparation for last night's grand finale.

I'll preface all of this by saying that Hayley REALLY enjoys going to bed at night. Each evening we wind down (actually there isn't really any "winding down" for Hayley) by watching Wheel of Fortune at 7pm. Hayley has always loved Wheel of Fortune and likes to hear contestants call the letters. She also looks forward to any pharmaceutical commercials that come on during that time. We've never been able to figure that one out, but she will drop everything she is doing to zero in on a pharmaceutical commercial. Anyhow, after the bonus round, Hayley grabs her milk, tells Mommy "bye," and grabs Daddy's finger to lead him off to storytime. After a few books, she then tells Daddy, "I done." Daddy will repeat Hayley's command and she will follow up by telling him, "bed, seep." At that point, it's off to bed where once in bed Hayley promptly tells us "bye." Never did we expect to have a toddler who so adamantly enjoys going to bed (and being left alone I might add). The comfort of this enjoyable, predictable and easy bedtime routine has made both Brian and I very nervous about the big girl bed transition. After all, why would you want to "fix" something that isn't broken? We absolutely enjoy our peaceful evenings and knowing that they are quickly dwindling doesn't make us at all anxious to do something that would make the peace cease immediately.

Last night we followed our regular bedtime routine except this time, Hayley was placed in her big girl bed. She got a little irritated at first and kept trying to climb into her crib. She'd drop Pooh in the crib, and go back and get her blanket and Froggy and drop them in the crib and then look up at us and fuss. After all, she wanted to go to bed!! Finally, I laid down on the bed with Pooh and Froggy and showed her that it was a place to sleep. She laid down next to me. After realizing that it was comfortable, she sat up, pushed me, and told me "bye." In other words, "get the heck outta here, I'm ready to go to bed!" I stood there and rubbed her back a bit and then slipped out of the room before heading off to watch her actions on our surveillance camera. Yes, we've hooked up a camera in Hayley's room that allows us to "spy" on our little dear all by turning to a channel on our tv. (Next, Brian plans to implant Hayley with a GPS microchip. We wouldn't want her to ever "get away" with anything!) It took Hayley a while to figure out exactly where to sleep in her new bed to be comfortable, but bless her heart she laid there and eventually went to sleep without so much as a fuss.

We had originally intended to start letting her sleep in the big girl bed at night while keeping her in the crib for naps. Naptime can be a little challenging as Hayley likes to sit and chat for a good 30 minutes before falling asleep. I figured naptime would be a difficult time to keep her in bed. But, after last night's success, we decided we should try the big girl bed for naps as well so we didn't confuse her. So at 1pm off to the big girl bed she went. I sat her down in bed and she immediately told me "bye." She seemed pleased as punch to be in her bed, so I left the room. She jabbered for a good 30 minutes like usual and then, SILENCE!

So, at this point, we're 2 for 2 and cautiously optimistic that we get to put a check next to one of those New Year's goals! It's days like this when we think, "hey, this parenting thing is pretty easy!" Yeah, I know, we'll probably get the rug pulled out from under us later this week!

Here's a little snippet of Hayley's first impression of the big girl bed. Lucky for us, her attitude changed quickly.

Hurricane Roars!

In case we haven't mentioned it before, Hayley is very advanced. She's so advanced in fact that we're afriad she's hitting those "Terrible Twos" just a tad bit early. We've had several power struggles over the past week or two and Ms. Hurricane just doesn't seem to understand who's wearing the pants, or shall I say shoes, around here. It definitely keeps our outings interesting and I'm sure we'll thank Hayley later. After all, she's just trying to keep us on top of our game in preparation for her little brother. He's going to be a troublemaker she tells me... moreso than Chloe or Pooh.

Hayley's vocabulary has really taken off over the past few weeks and it has been fun to hear what new word she will pick up on. She's obsessed with animals... particularly cows. Every large mammal is a cow. We took a walk the other day and ran into a lady walking a German Shephard. Hayley instantly began mooing at the dog. Granted, he was the size of a cow, but I think I probably need to expose Hayley to some larger dogs besides Chloe.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day and Brian and I spent a romantic morning together creating our wills... because nothing says love like planning for your death! After our morbid morning, we were able to enjoy lunch by the bay. The weather was perfect and we sat outside and enjoyed a nice lunch with each other. Overall, it was a great Valentine's Day. I could care less about flowers and chocolates... I'll take lunch in a beautiful setting with my favorite, good-looking Valentine anyday!

Hot flashes, indigestion, and loss of brain cells

Ah, pregnancy. It's a beautiful thing. I must be getting spoiled because now just being nausea free is not enough. I'm asking for more. Brian and I have the same conversation each night as we climb into bed.

Me: "Is it hot in here to you?"
Brian: "No, not really." (as he pulls on his wool socks)
Me: "You didn't turn the heat on did you?" (Knowing I'm probably going to wake up at 3am in a pool of my own sweat)
Brian: "I don't want Hayley to get cold."

Obviously his internal thermostat is broken because it couldn't possibly be me. In fact, I'm beginning to think that all these Floridians are certifiably crazy. The other morning Hayley and I headed outside to take Chloe for a walk. I had on shorts and a t-shirt, as did Hayley. It felt WONDERFUL outside. As we walked, we ran into one of the neighbors who looked at me strange and said "aren't you all cold??" He was wearing a sweatshirt and gloves. Obviously I wasn't cold and I could tell he was worried about the welfare of my daughter. His thermostat must be broken too. Luckily, Hayley seems to run about as warm blooded as me right now, so we're a good pair.

I think Hayley is warm because of all the running around she does and I'm pretty sure that I've identified the source that is making me so hot blooded. I like to call it my "fire within." It's coming from my esophagus. It's on fire all day long. Eating is becoming an exercise in misery once again as EVERYTHING I ingest results in the all day burn. Some foods are more pyrotechnic however. My general rule of thumb is that if it is enjoyable to eat (ie: decaf coffee, chocolate and tomato based foods, so long sweet Italian), then it will probably induce indigestion that is incurable by Tums or Maalox (of which I should own stock in by this point). I had (what I thought was bad at the time) indigestion with Hayley and we all know how much hair my little baldy had for her first year of life. If Frog Prince is born bald then I think I can safely shoot down that whole indigestion is linked to babies with lots of hair study.

But of all the perils of pregnancy, I've concluded that the most damaging one of all is the loss of my mind. I didn't have much to spare this time around as I'm pretty certain I hadn't fully recovered the brain cells I lost while pregnant with Hayley. At this point, I sometimes wonder if I should be responsible for myself, much less a toddler. One of my pre-baby projects was to clean up our home computers. Our home PC has been running like a dog and my laptop wasn't much faster. Part of the problem is that my hard drive was FULL of digital pictures. I bought a shiny new external hard drive and proceeded to backup both computers before reformatting the drives. The process went smoothly on both computers and I was pleased that I'd made it through this whole process without any problems. UNTIL... I decided it was time to begin work on Hayley's two year old birthday slideshow and I began searching on that shiny new external hard drive for all of those digital photos of my princess. Everything that I didn't care a lick about was backed up on that hard drive except the ONLY thing I did care about... ALL MY DIGITAL PHOTOS!! Of course I called Brian at work, completely hysterical that I'd LOST every memory of Hayley's first years of life. Once he calmed me down and reminded me that unless I'd scrubbed the drive the odds were good that I could somehow get my pictures back. Yes, his wisdom and ability to stay calm in an absolute CRISIS is just one of the many reasons why I married this wonderful man.

So after $70 (worth every penny) and some time on the Internet, I think I have recovered just about all of our hundreds of pictures. It's taken me hours to sort back through all of the pictures and reorganize them by date, etc. but I feel like this is a worthy punishment that I am grateful for at this point. My new plan for photo storage now includes keeping a copy of all pictures on that shiny new hard drive, as well as burning a copy to cd and taking it to a top secret, weather-proof offsite storage location that is manned by an armed guard 24 hours a day. I don't want any crazy people (you know, like me) getting access to my photos!

Ah, pregnancy. It's a beautiful DANGEROUS thing!

Politicking

Today was the Republican primary here in Florida so after a morning at PlayAway Hayley and I headed off to take part in the privelege of voting. We hit the polls around 11:45am and seeing as how our polling location is very much in a residential area with few businesses I was surprised at the turnout. Officials had predicted that turnout would be strong and what I saw definitely fulfilled their forecasts. Luckily the line moved quickly and it wasn't long before Hayley and I were on our way with her "I voted" sticker.

Our "patriot"


This is what happened when I told her that despite our vote today, it was possible that Hillary could be our next President!

Apparently she's got an opinion

Daddy and Hayley have a nightly ritual of playing in Hayley's room after dinner and a bath. After lots of giggling and squealing last night, I walked in to find this: The final part of this nightly ritual, is milk and storytime with Daddy. Since the day she was born, Hayley has known exactly what she wants. And she hasn't been afraid to express to us what she wants. A lot of times, we didn't get it right. She definitely let us know that. So it should come as no surprise that as she gets closer to two, her opinions are only becoming that much stronger. Nightly storytime is not immune from Hayley's opinions. She has a very definite idea of which books she wants to hear each night and she makes sure to let Daddy know. And she keeps us guessing because her book requests demands change from storytime to storytime.