Never a dull moment

Grammy and Grandpa were here last week so we enjoyed time with them.  Nana and Papa are coming this weekend and then we're going to Disney with them for a few days so that should be a good time as well.  

Dan had painted the baby's room and I had an appointment while my parents entertained Ashlan one day a few weeks ago.  While Grammy and Grandpa were here, I edged while they entertained Ashlan at a park and flew a kite.  Dan and I also put together the baby's new dresser and I just got done sorting Ashlan's old baby clothes and put them away for the new baby.  I have ordered the rest of the cloth diapers and also the infant car seat, so we're just waiting for those items to come in and we're pretty set.  I'm so glad too because I was starting to get really anxious, lol.  I still have a huge "to-do" list to work on but at least we have a few weeks to do it.  :)

I am 31 weeks pregnant on Saturday and I have gained around 34 pounds so far.  My doctor is not worried in the slightest but I'm kind of bummed because I seem to be on the same track for the 45 pound weight gain that I had with Ashlan.  I know I will lose it, because I lost it all last time plus 5, but it's frustrating that I couldn't keep it down to 30 lbs this time.  I still work out pretty religiously about 4 times a week but I obviously had to stop doing most weightlifting activities.  I am definitely anxious to get back in the gym to start weightlifting again when the doctor clears it because I really miss it!

Dan is pretty much the same, unfortunately.  He saw his general practitioner doctor the other week who suggested he swallow a camera to see if there were any major kinks in his intestines that would need to be addressed.  He will see his G.I. doctor in a week and a half so hopefully he can bring this up to him, considering he's still not any better even though he's been following the recommended diet and has since his hospital stay.  We will see what happens.

I'm hesitant to post this because this really gives me the horrible mother of the year award but if it can save another parent a scary moment, so be it.  Ashlan got her hair caught in the shredder yesterday.  :(  She was helping me shred paper as she has done millions of times before and is normally so far away from the machine (well, her head that is, lol).  She told me like 10 sec before it happened that the shredder was hot and smelled.  I was right next to her and was separating paper when she bent over (I'm assuming to smell it), and her long hair got sucked in.  Thank God the shredder stopped immediately but her head was as close to it as could be and I had to cut her hair.  Luckily, she has a few pieces of her bangs left that can be swept to the side to cover most of the short hair, but we will be accessorizing a lot in the next few weeks.  I'm just glad she is ok and this is a lesson I never want to repeat.

Our little princess.  She insisted on going out to dinner with this dress on.  :)

So sweet. She wanted to kiss my belly.  <3

30 weeks pregnant here.

My little crafter.

This is baby girl #2's room.  Looks very similar to Ashlan's old room but it really needed the fresh paint.

Ignore all the bags on the changing table.  That is my diaper stash, and it's not even finished yet!  :)

My poor baby girl.  :(

It was stuck in there really, really good.

This was yesterday.  She asked me to bake cookies.  How could I refuse?

While I was sorting clothes in the baby's room, this is what Ashlan was doing pretty much the whole time.  Always wants to be with me, especially in the baby's room.  :)  I hope she will be a big help.

Silly girl.  <3

These are Ashlan's snakes.  They've been there for three or four days.  You'd think I'd just move them, but no, I'll just scare the bejesus out of me when I get up to use the restroom at three o'clock in the morning!

Poor girl.  :(

The comb over is working well for her, lol.

Spiky hair!!

January 2014

So the weekend after Christmas was eventful.  For those of you that haven't heard, Dan was admitted to the hospital again for a partial bowel obstruction.  He was only gone a total of 48 hours but that was already too much!  Thankfully, my parents were here so I could take him in the middle of the night to the ER.  They found undigested food still in his stomach 24 hours after he'd eaten it, which should have been digested in 2 hours, per the GI specialist that he saw.  Good and bad news came out of this visit.  The good news is, he is now recovering and he needs to change his diet and this will hopefully never happen again (knock on wood!).  The bad news is that this new "diet" is for the rest of his life and couldn't be more opposite of how we normally eat.  He can't have raw veggies, steak, chicken, beans, whole wheat, whole grain, nuts, raisins, seeds, fruits with seeds, anything with fiber, etc.  He is pretty much stuck to fish, regular pasta, very soft veggies (and not even all veggies at that), ground beef, etc.  All meats are limited to 3-4oz when he could easily eat triple that, especially chicken.  We used to eat a lot of whole grain or wheat, veggies, and chicken, and this will certainly be a lifestyle change for us.  Seems almost anti-healthy, but if his body can't digest it, then his body can't digest it.  Not much else we can do.  We just want to avoid hospital stays, so hopefully this will lessen his pain (which had been getting worse and worse), and keep him out of the hospital.  He's still in pain most of the day, unfortunately.  This is most likely due to scar tissue between his two surgeries.  The doctor thinks his intestines are kinked, which also makes food hard to pass through, but the pain is probably from adhesions from the scar tissue.  Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done except more surgery, and even then, it's not guaranteed that he will be better from it, and in fact, it could make him worse.  So it seems like we're stuck without any other options.  We can only hope this new diet will help lessen his pain a bit.

We went to Disney for the weekend when Dan was on his weeklong "liquid" diet after his hospital stay- that was interesting, lol.  Lots of yogurt, pudding, cream soups, etc.  We did have a lot of fun though and Ashlan got to meet some princesses she'd never met before.  It is nice that I am pregnant now because we can still get fast passes and Dan and Ashlan can go twice on a ride which we'd all be able to just go on once before.  She is obsessed with the Maelstrom in Epcot- she and Dan went on it four times in about an 18 hour time period, lol.  She also finally met Tiana and Merida this time.  She keeps asking for Belle, and one of these days we will get there but she's only in Epcot and the line is always super long!  We are going in February though, so since I can't ride rides, I will stand in line and we'll do it that way.  Our annual passes are also due for renewal in February.   Hard to believe it's been a year already since we first bought them!  We went there seven times throughout the year, so it was worth it.  After February's visit, we will probably take some time off since I'm due in early April.  Will be fun to explain that to Ashlan, lol.  

A week after Dan got out of the hospital (and the day after we got back from Disney), we all got the stomach flu.  Our first family flu, lol.  Poor Dan just can't catch a break here with his stomach.  Hopefully we're all on the mend now.  This has been a rough end to 2013 and a rough start to 2014.  We can only hope and pray it will get better!

We switched Ashlan's gymnastics class because the other girl quit and Ashlan was by herself.  So now she's taking an hour long class.  We weren't sure how she'd do but she's doing great!  She's also in with two other girls- one is four and one is five.  They tower over her but she can do the same things they can.  They are way better at sitting still though, lol.  Ashlan will wait her turn but she is always fidgeting.  Luckily, she has her same teacher, who is fabulous with her and knows how to handle her personality, so Ashlan feels comfortable with her and so do we.

Ashlan got her first haircut (just a trim) yesterday and she did great!  I got my haircut first, so she watched me, and before we went, I had been telling her that she was going to have to sit still for the haircut.  Magically, she did sit still, lol.  The stylist was pretty fast and efficient though, so that helped, and we promised her McDonald's if she was good, so it was probably a combo of everything, but she did great.  

At Hollywood Studios because Ashlan insisted we see Sully.

With Jake.

With Mickey, of course.  He's always on her list to see.

And Daisy too.

Couldn't stop talking about seeing Pluto.  It was freezing that night!!!  Yes, we did need a hat and gloves, it was around 45 degrees...

With Snow White.

With Tiana.

With Merida.

Trying to shoot an arrow.

With Alice and the rabbit.

With Cinderella.

With Ashlan's favorite band, British Revolution.  Ignore her wet shirt, she had just gone potty and washed her hands, lol.

New sunglasses that she insisted on wearing during the fireworks, lol.

With Ariel.

With Rapunzel.

Wouldn't be Ashlan if she wasn't in a princess dress while playing with her dinosaurs in her dollhouse.

First haircut!

Just a trim.  I didn't tell her to smile- she happened to look up when I was snapping the pic and smiled.

Thanksgiving, Ashlan's 3rd birthday and Christmas

A lot has happened in a few weeks.  I will just hit on some and do another blog for the later stuff.  Instead of doing a traditional Thanksgiving since we knew it'd be just the three of us, we decided to go to Disney for Thanksgiving.  It was weird not eating turkey but nice not having to cook and Ashlan always has a blast there.  Next year, I'm sure we'll be home instead, but we hadn't gone in November, and knew we wouldn't go until January, so we thought, why not?  Untraditional but we had a lot of fun. 

When we got home, we only had a weekend and then we traveled to PA for two weeks for Ashlan's 3rd birthday.  She had a wonderful time playing with her cousins, grandparents, and definitely in the snow!  It was her first time playing in it, and two snowmen were dedicated to this special event, lol.  I'm glad she got to see snow, because she had been talking about it for weeks.

A few weeks ago, we decided to go see Santa on a weekday that Dan had off.  Afterwards, we were in the car, pulling out of an area where you had a hard time seeing if anyone was coming around the corner.  Dan pulled out slowly but gunned it when he saw a car coming faster than he liked, and turned the wheel sharply to get into the right lane.  Ashlan looked up at me, and said, "Daddy's trying to kill us", with a completely straight face.  I have jokingly said that before when we were all in the car and I guess she picked up on it.  We were all laughing so hard after that.

A couple of days ago, we wanted to go out and told Ashlan we needed to get her shoes and jacket on.  Dan grabbed her shoes and brought them to her (she usually does this by herself) and I was on the floor in front of her, helping her zip her jacket up.  She patted my head, looked at both of us and said, "You guys are such good helpers".   Lol.  She's too funny.  

A few days before Christmas we decided to get an iPad mini.  Both Ashlan and I have been splitting time using it, but we got it primarily so she could do certain apps on it.  She loves ABC Mouse and she was getting good at using our laptop's mouse, but we wanted the iPad for when we're out and about.  She is mainly using that now so the laptop has reverted back to being used for Netflix only, haha.  She is doing very well with counting and matching.  She will listen to alphabet videos and do a few games of those, but she loves the counting ones and I'd say spends about 90% of her time doing that.  I never would have thought she'd go for those instead, but maybe she is a numbers person.  I'm just glad we didn't waste money on the iPad, but then again, she's been stealing our phones for months, lol.

Ashlan decided she had enough of naps about two weeks ago.  I have to say, she's doing better than I thought without many meltdowns, and truthfully, she sometimes still has them anyway with naps, lol.  She's been usually going down around 8pm and stays down until 6:30/7am.  That's not too bad, but still shorter than what she was getting most days with naps.  So far, so good though.  We take her to the potty in the middle of the night when we get up, to cut down on accidents.  Hopefully we won't have to do that much longer!

A few nights ago, Dan and I had just put Ashlan down and we were watching a funny show in our room and waiting for her to fall asleep.  It was kinda chilly that night and she didn't want her fan turned on, but that means she can hear more house noise.  She was just softly talking to herself and we thought she'd knock off soon so we started watching the show.  Something funny happened on the show and I started laughing really hard.  Apparently she heard me and thought we were laughing at her because she shouted, "No!  It's not funny!"  

One day around noon Dan and I were in the front room, and Ashlan was running around the house.  She flies into the room and states, "Mommy, I want mac'n'cheese for lunch, but not the white kind, the yellow kind.  I'll just play for a little bit while you go make it."  Lol.  

We gave her a bath a few days ago and I put her hair up afterwards in sort of a low bun.  It was dark out when she got out and as she walked into the living room and saw herself in the sliding glass door (which acts like a mirror when it's dark out), she stated, "I look like a teacher."  Lol.  First, how she knows what a teacher looks like is beyond me, and second, how does she even know what a teacher is anyway?  Maybe abc mouse?  I don't know, but we all got a good laugh out of that.  

Onto the pics...

Insisted on wearing her new sweatshirt even when it was warm outside.

Seeing Rapunzel for our Thanksgiving trip.

Seeing Snow White...

Just a normal day in this princess's life- she wanted to dress up.  :)

Happened once right after she quit naps, lol.  Hasn't happened again.

Magic Kingdom at night.

Pretty cold for Disney weather!  We dealt with it, haha.

New hat and boots for PA trip.

New iPad.  Playing ABC mouse and loving it!

Electronic books from Nana and Papa.  She loves them.

Her and daddy playing with her doctor stuff.

And now using ABC mouse on the laptop.  Every once in awhile she prefers the laptop.

Relaxing at Nana and Papa's.

Playing in the snow.

With Aunt Katie at her party.

Pretty excited that we sung happy birthday to her...or maybe just for the cupcake, haha.

Princess Aurora dress from Grammy and Grandpa- another dress up favorite!

Snowman #2.

Playing with all of Aunt Katie's old stuffed animals.  :)

And throwing them all out of the container so she could sit in it.

She is a fantastic traveler!  This was coming back from PA.  Does get a little carsick though when she does something like reading.  Wish she took after me in that sense.  :(

Meeting Santa for the first time.  She wanted to go back, lol.

Painting, a favorite hobby of hers.

We had family pics taken for our Christmas card and this was one.