I'm probably breaking all sorts of parent rules here. I probably shouldn't talk about both kids in one post, but rather give them each their own. I shouldn't compare them. Oh well. Sorry, kids.

So! Audrey is three months old today. I would have been back to work for a week now but I am not going back. It is scary and exciting. Not sure which emotion is winning right now and it has not really sunk in anyway. It is good that I did not go back to work because Audrey is all over the place. Patrick was in our room in the Pack'n'Play for about the first two months, then he (and we) was (were) ready for him to move into his crib in his own room. By the time I went back to work he was waking up only about once a night, at 5 a.m., and then he'd sleep until 8. He was exclusively breastfed until I went back but pumping at work did not go well and ... I don't know why I'm recapping Patrick when this is supposed to be about Audrey. At least I should start with her. She WILL NOT SLEEP unless she is touching me. I don't know quite how this happened. We started off fine. She would nurse, fall asleep, I would put her in her crib, she'd sleep for three hours. Somehow, she now only catnaps while on her Boppy (forbidden!) or in her swing, or SOMETIMES, if I am VERY LUCKY, she will sleep all by herself for a couple of hours before I go to bed, but only that late night period. I keep thinking I will do something about this, but I don't know what, exactly. It turns out I co-sleep.

I have also transitioned to cloth diapers. It seems to be working well and it is not very hard. I am still fiddling with the wash routine and I expect we will have issues when the sun goes away in winter and then when she starts solids. But it is very nice to not have to drop $30+ on diapers every time I go to the grocery store. (I got cheap cloth and/or bought on clearance so I suspect I will be saving money ALTHOUGH the diaper detergent I am using is expensive.)

This post is probably very boring. I meant it to be a cute little update about the kiddos. The fact is, Audrey is super cute and of course we love her but she is not very interesting as yet. She eats a lot. She spits up a lot. (Patrick never did.) She does not like tummy time. She has rolled over a couple of times but I am not counting it officially yet because I think she has always been on some sort of incline. She is not keen on using her arms to hold herself up (or roll over), preferring instead to arch her back and kick with her legs. I think sometimes she looks like a little ski jumper. (Probably picked the wrong country to be born in for that though.) She is very smiley when she's not screaming (so ... when someone is holding her). She has got a set of lungs on her. The neighbors have come running to make sure she's okay. She's THAT loud. And that was just because she was unhappy. She wasn't wet or hungry or anything. I suspect she has a bit of reflux and possibly some food sensitivities so I will give her a pass due to that. I have mostly cut out dairy (good thing I like almond milk) and I am hoping that as a bonus I can lose some weight. HA. I have also procured a hazelwood and amber necklace which is supposed to help with all these sorts of things. WHO AM I?

I think Audrey should have been a first child. Patrick was so easy. He is still easy and I feel so ridiculously bad, like I am ignoring him, and letting the TV babysit him, because I have to feed Audrey. (Full disclosure: as much as I want to spend time with him and play with him, sometimes I cannot stand the games he wants to play. "Let's knock over the tower of blocks repeatedly" just about drove me batty today.) 

Patrick is an awesome big brother. When Audrey cries, he will turn on her swing or her music and sit next to her to see if she's okay. Or, he will offer helpful suggestions. "Mom, I think Audrey needs to feed." Or, "Mom, I think Audrey has a lot of gas in her tummy." He suggested to Grandma the other day that Audrey might like it if she patted her back. He was right. He often calls her Audrey Caroline (even though we don't) but he will absolutely not respond to Patrick James. "I'm just Patrick Hodge," he will say.

Patrick is playing tee ball this fall. He hates having to go but once he gets there he seems to have fun. The coach has never coached before and I think (through no fault of her own) that she's not very good, but it's instructional tee ball so I'm not that worried. There is one overbearing dad on the team but he seems to have calmed down a bit even just since the first practice. His kid is older than the rest and played last year. Patrick is actually pretty good at hitting (or at least at making contact), and he has exclusively hit righty, although he still favors his left hand in most things. We have not tried to have him hit lefty; everyone else on the team bats right so he just goes with the flow. I have realized that I can never coach Patrick's (or, looking to the future, Audrey's) team(s), because, as Patrick was called out at first when he slowed down to come to a stop on the bag, I had to stop myself from yelling, "RUN THROUGH THE BAG!" which was my dad's downfall both when he coached me and when he peer-coached my mom on our respective softball teams. Clearly I have never recovered. Patrick has so far played second base and shortstop in the field and I am not sure if he has even touched the ball on defense. He prefers to roll around in the dirt or construct roads.

The funniest thing (well, funny to me) he does these days is ask, "Was you just kidding with me?" This is trotted out whenever you tell him something he doesn't want to hear and he tries to convince you to change your answer. He is moderately successful at this because he is good-hearted and sensitive and I am a weak little sap. Something about the delivery and the grammatical error and the earnestness with which he says this, it just kills me.

He loves trains, Buzz Lightyear (and the whole Toy Story clan, but especially Buzz), firetrucks, firehouses, waffles, chicken nuggest, Happy Meals and cartoons. (We went to the beach in August and he watched SpongeBob ... sigh ... and now that he has realized SpongeBob has a best friend named Patrick we have to watch. He also likes Mickey Mouse Clubhouse which is much better.) He still refuses to wear shirts with buttons. Actually a lot of the time, he doesn't wear clothes at all. He hates going to bed. He still likes baths (and so does his sister) and he went through a phase where he painted his nails, which his father and especially his grandfather HATED. He likes to help me cook, and he has an awesome imagination. He is spoiled rotten but he is such a great little kid that we will just deal with that later because we can't help outselves.

Life is good. :)

Posted by Molly at 10:29 PM EDT

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Likes: being warm, sleeping on her tummy, sleeping on her parents, sleeping in general, screaming, eating, spitting up just after her mom puts the burp cloth away, bathing, her brother, grunting, being outside, being swaddled

Dislikes: sleeping on her back, sleeping for longer than an hour at a time at night, loud noises, gas, people messing with her toes or her feet, getting dressed (runs in the family, I guess, ha), photo shoots, pacifiers, bottles  

Is Not Sure About: going for walks, riding in the car, other people 

Sneezes when the sun hits her face. Can hold her head up some. Almost smiling. Or maybe she is? There is no corresponding (obvious) gas. Just in the last day or two. Hopefully we will have official confirmation soon. Focusing better; will stare at you some but prefers looking at lights or fans or something. Already too big for size NB clothes, or at least her head is too big for the opening on the onesies... :) Has nice fingernails. They need a trim.

Posted by Molly at 11:10 PM EDT

Updated: Thu 07/26/2012 1:42 PM EDT

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So Patrick is three-and-a-half, plus one month. That one month has been a big one; he got a new little sister and he got to stop going to daycare. 

I read somewhere that when you have a second child, you'd think the first one would be the loser, because the new baby needs lots of attention, has actual needs that must be met, etc, but actually the new baby ends up getting the short end of the stick. This has not been the case here. Well, I sort of feel like both of them are getting the short end of the stick. But where I'm going with this is that Patrick is doing pretty great. He is a good helper (well ... he tries anyway) and he is concerned about his sister, gives her kisses when she cries and tries to comfort her. She started crying the other day and he announced, "I think she wants to eat!" (Having an inquisitive toddler around while breastfeeding is interesting. I pulled out the manual breastpump the other day, and Patrick wanted to help me use it ...)

Initially we had planned that Patrick would continue to go to daycare while I was on maternity leave (and still getting a paycheck). Then, I would stay home with both kiddos. However, Patrick had other plans. For a while, he'd been upset about going to daycare. It's hard to know why, as he'd had three (four?) different teachers in less than a year, and we were now on our third daycare director (in three years). I was used to the crying at dropoff, though I couldn't figure out any way around it. But when Patrick started asking at bedtime if he had to go to daycare tomorrow, and crying if the answer was yes, it got a bit more complicated. Normally, he'd move up to the next older classroom in March, but by the end of April, he hadn't yet, so I talked to the director. She said she was planning a school-wide graduation in June, so he'd move up then, and in the meantime, he'd spend some portion of the day in the 'big kids classroom' to get acclimated. This was fine, until Patrick started throwing fits when they tried to send him down to the big kids class. And they gave in and let him stay in his class. I figure I'm allowed to be a pushover, but I'm paying them to keep him in line, so what gives? But anyway, THEN he started telling us that he didn't like the big kids classroom, because the big kids were mean and they hit him and they never got in trouble but if he hit them back he had to sit in timeout. It is always hard to tell how much a 3-year-old is making up, but his story was consistent so it gave me pause. Back to talk to the director again; she was noncommittal. 

As we got closer to June 25, and Patrick cried every night before bed and every morning before we got in the car because he had to go to daycare, I realized that I was not going to be up to dealing with this while also caring for  newborn. And we could save money by pulling him out of daycare. This was cemented when, by the third week of June, Patrick had STILL not been 'promoted' to the big boy classroom, and when I asked, AGAIN, I was now told that he would be moved up in August, after all of his friends (who are 5-6 months YOUNGER) had  moved up, so then he would feel left out and theoretically wouldn't cry about it anymore. Yeah.

So he's been home and it's been fine. We watch entirely too much TV, but there are two things preventing me from doing much else: (1) Patrick's sister, who is much more needy than he was and does NOT like to be put down AT ALL EVER and (2) the ridiculous heat this summer. So eventually we'll have to get on a decent schedule and, you know, learn stuff, but, eh, whatever, it's summer. I was always bad about doing anything constructive over the summer anyhow.

I feel like I'm digressing from Patrick here. Oopsie. While all the daycare business was quite challenging, he is really in fact quite charming these days. He will give me hugs out of the blue and also out of the blue will say things like, "Thank you for not making me go to daycare today, Mommy." He has this quirky little thing where he'll say, "I'm so glad ... [you didn't make me go to daycare]," (heh) which cracks me up because it's rather formal and I don't think either James or I says it. The other thing he does is to end sentences with "...and stuff." Like, he's not quite sure where to go with what he's been saying. "Mommy, when that tree fell down, Daddy's friend came over to help him cut it and he used his chainsaw and I helped ... and stuff." Lately he has been saying he's "super happy" about things which I thought was ridiculously cute until I noticed that Kai-Lan of the ridiculously annoying TV show says that. (It's still cute. Whatever.)

Patrick likes to run around naked. Occasionally we can convince him to put on swim trunks. He has way too many toys and is fascinated by fire trucks, airplanes and trains. Possibly out of necessity he has become quite good at playing on his own, and is very imaginative. I'm glad that he has developed this skill but I wish I could play with him more. (Although, who am I kidding, half the time he tells me to go away.) He would like to eat chicken nuggets and french fries all the time and seems to have inherited my sweet tooth. He can occasionally be persuaded to eat waffles, as long as they have copious amounts of butter slathered on them, and I have on more than one occasion seen him licking the butter off. 

I'm sure there's more, and I'll try to get to that soon. :)

Posted by Molly at 8:27 PM EDT

Updated: Sat 07/21/2012 9:28 AM EDT

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I'm not sure why peepee teepees are a popular shower gift (supposedly -- I never got any) because I've already been peed on more in two weeks with a baby girl than I was in two-plus years of Patrick in diapers. So thanks for that, Audrey. 

Aurdrey is a lot different than Patrick. I was always vaguely worried that I had really gotten off easy with Patrick and I was going to pay for it if/when I had a second child. And I was also scared of having a girl baby. So far, it seems that I was somewhat right. I think Audrey is still pretty easygoing, and she by necessity gets less time just for her. But she does not like to be put down. (Patrick never cared. Bouncy seat, bed, whatever.) She also is not a fan of sleeping on her back. This is not great. Because I am paranoid, you see, and there is that whole back to sleep campaign, and I would just put her on her back EXCEPT she is strong and stubborn and somehow manages to get herself on her side and THEN I get nervous and no one gets any sleep. Well, this is not true. Audrey sleeps just fine on her back when she is nestled in her Boppy, which of course you are not supposed to do. But I figure it's all right during the day when I'm right there watching.

Anyway. Physically, she is much more newborn-like than Patrick was, as I alluded to yesterday. She is currently looking massively in need of exfoliation on her hands and feet. The nurses warned me about this, which was nice, because Patrick never had peeling skin, or if he did, it was underneath his fleece sleeper since it was December and not record-breaking days of 100-degree heat. I think she is sleepier but that could just be my faulty memory. Her cord stump is showing no signs of falling off, which is beginning to annoy me, because I would like to actually bathe her. (Patrick's fell off at 10 days old.) {Sidenote: I got steri strips for this c-section as opposed to staples and they were supposed to fall off 'in about two weeks' and they, too are showing no signs of falling off, which is ALSO beginning to annoy me.} 

She is a LOUD sleeper. She grunts and squeaks and does all manner of things. In the hospital, they said she was a 'spitter' but this was because she was a c-section-without-labor baby which meant she hadn't been squeezed through the birth canal to get rid of all the stuff in her chest. Or whatever. This, I guess, has gone away, but sometimes she still seems to have to catch her breath. Or perhaps it is just that my giant boob is covering her nose when she's trying to eat so she actually can't breathe. I also wonder if the grunting is related to Wimbledon, as it began on the day of her birth and I have been watching it every day since then. It ended today with Roger Federer's seventh title, matching Pete Sampras, and, Audrey, if you're ever reading this, please note that I really loved Pistol Pete and I did not want Federer to equal his record BUT I could not bring myself to root for Andy Murray the hometown favorite who would have been the first British man to win Wimbledon since 1936 or something. Anyway, attending Wimbledon is probably on my bucket list, and somehow I have gotten way off track so I'll just stop here and write more as I think of it, heh. 

Posted by Molly at 10:32 PM EDT

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So, I had a baby.

I always like to read birth stories, so you would think I would write one. I wrote an epic novel for Patrick's birth, but I did not post it here. It was just sort of a way to process what went down, because it was not the best experience. Of course the result was the best, Patrick was perfect (heh) and we were fine, but the nurses were awful and the hospital was terrible and ugh. This time around, I am working on a birth story, but I don't need to write it as much because the experience was much better. Partly, I'm sure, because I didn't go through labor and I was out of the hospital about 55 hours after I got there. Anyway, the point is, I'm doing this a bit out of order.

Audrey seems much more like a newborn than Patrick ever did. Perhaps this is because I simply don't remember (likely), or perhaps it is because she was born at 39 weeks, 5 days gestation and Patrick was 41 weeks, 1 day (also likely), or perhaps it is a combination (probably most likely). She also weighed more than a pound less and was a positively normal sized 7 pounds and 3 ounces when she came home. {Sidenote: The pediatrician at the hospital, who I was unimpressed with, spent much less time looking her over than the pediatrician who discharged Patrick. That one freaked me out because she said Patrick had a single palmar crease, and then she grabbed our hands and tried to see if we had that affliction as well. We don't. Patrick is fine. This doctor basically looked at her weight and her blood test levels and said she was fine. I looked at her hands and she has 'normal' creases.}

I think my milk came in sooner with Patrick, which makes sense, because I'd actually gone into labor, but this time it still came in before the 'danger zone' Day 5. So when we went to our pediatrician for follow-up, Audrey hadn't lost any more weight and she was deemed fine and we don't even have to bring her back until she's more than two months old. (WHAT?!?) 

Aaaaand I'm going to have to finish this later. BUT I'm going to publish now as is or else this will languish in draft form forever. 

Posted by Molly at 6:45 PM EDT

Updated: Sat 07/07/2012 10:30 PM EDT

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I still hope to one day resurrect this blog. In the meantime, a placeholder so I don't forget this. Ever.

(This is from Monday, 6/11)

We were at dinner and Patrick grabbed my hand and said, "Mommy, you're my best friend." SWEETEST THING EVER. Then he kissed my hand. 

He is clearly already angling for 'favorite child' status. 

Posted by Molly at 6:55 AM EDT

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Back before I met James, my parents had a season ticket mini plan for the Carolina Hurricanes. My brother and I went a lot. Our favorite player was Mike Commodore. I mean, how can you not love this? Kevin even got a Commodore jersey. Needless to say, we were disappointed when he was traded. I promptly ordered an official Mike Commodore Fighting Sioux bobblehead.

Much more recently, I pulled my bobblehead collection out of its storage box. (Mike was not in there; he had a prized place on my dresser.) Patrick, as previously noted, is fascinated by my bobbleheads. I was going to try to sell them for a profit on ebay, but a quick search showed that ... nobody else wants them either. So I let Patrick abuse them. He likes the baseball players, but he is totally fascinated by Mike, "who has orange hair."   

Me: Patrick, do you know who else has orange hair?
Patrick: Um. ... No?
Me: Does Daddy have orange hair?
Patrick: No!
Me: Does Patrick have orange hair?
Patrick: No! Me: What color is your hair?
Patrick: Black!

For Christmas, I gave James three tickets to a Hurricanes game. I got tickets for a family night in March. March 3, to be exact, vs. Tampa Bay. (I have some weird connection to Tampa Bay ... dating back to my interview with the Astros.) Now, of course I told James that he didn't have to, you know, take me and Patrick, he could go with his buddies or whatever. He said not to be silly, of course he was going with us. Then I discovered the Dook-Carolina game was March 3 at 7 p.m. I told James that REALLY it was okay if he wanted to go with his buddies. He said no.

THEN. Mike Commodore was traded to Tampa Bay. I was entirely too excited. We told Patrick we were going to see the real Mike at the hockey game. He asked if it was the basketball game with the loud horn (he was traumatized by the wine-and-cheese fans in Chapel Hill ... not a good sign). We assured him it was not the basketball game. I hoped maybe the Hurricanes wouldn't score much. When we got ready to go and put our jerseys on, Patrick asked if this meant he could go play on the ice with Mike. Even though we told him no, he was still super excited.

We got inside and looked at the John Deere tractors on display, and watched the John Deere zamboni, and rode the escalator, and Patrick kept saying, over and over, "Can I see the real Mike?" We got to our seats, in the top row of the arena, just before the national anthem.

"Where's the real Mike"?

The game started, and luckily, Mike was playing. Patrick was excited, but yet disappointed because he couldn't see Mike's orange hair under his helmet.

AND THEN THE HURRICANES SCORED. The goal horn went off. Patrick's face crumpled.

"I wanna go hooooooooooome," he cried. He calmed down a bit after we took a quick trip to see the tractor again and rode the escalators. James got some food. It was dollar dog night, so that's what we had.

Patrick kept eyeing the nachos the guy next to us had.

We managed to make it through the first period, and part of the second. Then Patrick said, "Mommy? Can we go home now? These people are too loud."

We took this picture, and then left.

On the way out, the Hurricanes scored twice more. But then they lost so I didn't feel too bad.

When we got home, Patrick said, "Can I watch a video of Mike on your computer? Where I can see his orange hair?" So for the last week, Patrick and I have been watching Mike Commodore fights on YouTube. I have to admit, it's pretty fun. :)

Posted by Molly at 5:03 PM EST

Updated: Fri 03/09/2012 5:04 PM EST

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Today was Patrick's 3-year-old well-child visit. He's actually three years, two months and two days, but who's counting? I had been trying to talk up the doctor visit the last couple of days so he wouldn't be like his mother freak out, since I wasn't sure if he had to get a shot or not. (He didn't, but he had to get blood drawn via finger stick, which sucked. I hate those myself.) So he was pretty excited to get weighed and measured and 'see if I'm a big kid.' He was 32 lbs, 4 oz, and 38 inches tall. I like the number 38. His BP was 78/54. (Mine has never been that low in the presence of a medical professional except when I was bleeding profusely.) He was so, so good during his appointment, and when the doctor came in, he launched into a monologue about how Woody might climb up the wall, jump off the fire alarm into the ceiling tile and maybe get a kite, and then he'd (Patrick) have to go up after him and get Daddy's ladder, and be very, very careful on Daddy's ladder, and then on the roof, maybe they would get a kite. This is one of my favorite things (so far) about age 3: the monologues. He just gets going and ... doesn't stop. It's a huge run-on sentence with lots of commas and "and thens." People tell me he's a talker. I don't know, since he's my first, so I just think that's how kids are. :) But I hope he is. I hope he takes after his father in that regard, and never has any problems talking to people. 

He still cries when I drop him off at daycare, and it breaks my heart every time. Because as much as he doesn't want to be there (in that moment), I don't want him to have to be there. Also, I don't want to go to work. So when he says he doesn't want to go to daycare, I'm right there with him. If he says he doesn't want to go to bed at night, he wants to stay up for 'just one more monkey,' because he'd rather watch "Curious George" than have to go to sleep so he can wake up and go to daycare, I can empathize. So, I enable him. If it's all manipulation, Patrick, you win. I don't care. I like to think you're taking after me, although perhaps you should try not to.

I heard that age 3 is way worse than age 2. So far, it's not. So far, Patrick's great. Of course I'm biased, but he is. He's fun, and he's smart, and he's sort of okay with the idea of having a sister in June. (As long as she doesn't take his crib -- that he no longer sleeps in -- or play with his toys.) He asked me about a month ago if I was going to poop the baby out, and then two nights ago, he asked if the doctor was going to cut open my tummy to get the baby out. I told him he pretty much has it covered, one way or the other.

There are two new things that Patrick has mastered at age 3, both of which probably only matter to me. One: alternating feet going up the steps. He has always led with his left foot (and I still hope he's going to be my little southpaw) but he finally figured out you could do one and then the other. He's even faster now. Two: sleeping under the covers. Patrick had blankets in his crib once he turned 1, and he's been in his bed for a little more than a year, and for the longest time, he would NOT pull up the covers. I mean, he'd go to sleep with them on, then kick them off, get cold, and cry. Only lately has he been sleeping under the covers. And actually the other day I went to wake him up, and he'd somehow managed to turn all the way upside down, still completely under the covers. He seems to like to sleep with something over his head, so it's a good thing we didn't let him sleep with blankets when he was younger.

Patrick really likes watching Toy Story (we have the first and third one, or as Patrick calls them, the "dog Woody" or the "bear Woody") and Curious George, and he really likes trains. Thomas, of course; Dinosaur Train; the train at the Museum of Life & Science; and the train downtown (Amtrak), which my mom and I have promised him that he can ride sometime. Patrick loves chewing gum (and leaving ABC gum EVERYWHERE), especially Uncle Kevin's 'green gum' (spearmint). He also loves anything sweet. He does not really seem to care for vegetables or basically anything good for him. In fact, he told me the other day that he doesn't like the spaghetti I make at home -- he likes the spaghetti they eat at daycare. Sigh.

Patrick has also taken to repeating things that he shouldn't. This is completely his father's fault. He abuses plays with my bobbleheads (which I should never have let him play with), calls them his kids. One night, the kids were fighting in his bedroom, and Richard called Jeffy a stupid m*ther f*cker.

"Patrick!" I said. "We don't say that. Where did you hear that?"

"Daddy says it," said Patrick, grinning.

"Daddy only says it when he's playing his evil video games," I said. "So we don't say that."

The next night, the kids were fighting again. Once again, Richard called Jeffy a stupid m*ther f*cker. Patrick looked at me and said, "It's okay, Mommy, I won't say it at daycare."
 

Posted by Molly at 3:26 PM EST

Updated: Wed 02/22/2012 3:59 PM EST

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Last night, I wanted to watch the Carolina game. Patrick wanted to watch Curious George. So I told him he could have a turn and watch George, then I would have a turn and watch basketball. He said okay. We watched George. Then he turned to me and said, "Just one more, monkey? Okay?" And I said, "No, Patrick, now it's my turn." And he said, "Okay, Mommy, it's your turn to watch my show."

-----

I turned the basketball game on anyway, with the plan that Patrick would go to bed at halftime (~9pm, his supposed bedtime), which might have worked (probably not) had he not spontaneously started jumping up and down on the couch yelling "GO TAR HEELS!" Score one for Patrick, the little manipulator, who got to stay up until the game was over.

-----

This morning, when we got to daycare, Patrick's class was already playing outside, so I took him over to the door, and the teacher came over to supervise the handoff. Then I went over to sign him in and he came running across the room and yelled, "One more hug!" and gave me a big hug before he ran back outside. I melted. It was so adorably cute. 

Posted by Molly at 3:45 PM EST

Updated: Thu 02/16/2012 3:55 PM EST

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So. I sort of went all stealth mode there for a while. Let's catch up. Sort of last minute, Kevin and I decided to do our sibling fun weekend at Busch Gardens. We had missed baseball season, would have enjoyed a football game in Pittsburgh except it was so expensive, and weren't super excited about hockey season. Kevin had a tradition of going to Hallow-Scream (not with any of his family, ha) and wanted to go back. We found a weekend where the Kingsmill Resort had a room for two nights (only place Kevin will stay), got BOGO tickets to the park, and we were set.

Meanwhile, James and I had been TTC. This had been going on since April or May, with no success as yet. Some months we probably tried harder than others. This time, we didn't try overly hard. I had stopped temping because I thought I was probably getting too obsessive about it. HOWEVER. We happened to hit the timing pretty well BY ACCIDENT.

The day we were leaving for Busch Gardens was the day my period was due. Normally I would have peed on a stick, but James was out of town at a funeral and didn't want to miss all the fun. So I didn't. I did, however, pee on an ovulation test that I randomly had. I had read that it was the same hormone, but of course wasn't reliable. I was NOT ovulating, but in fact the control line was super faint. I found a posting in an online forum that someone had had this happen to her and been pregnant. Hmm.

I started googling things like 'riding roller coasters while 10 days pregnant.' You know, just in case. The consensus was: don't. The problem with this was that Kevin was NOT going to let me off the hook, and it would have been fair to him anyway to not go on any of the rides, and I was trying so hard not to let TTC impact my life. So: ignorance is bliss.

Busch Gardens was pretty awesome. I hadn't been in probably 10+ years. We drove up on Saturday, checked in to the hotel and headed to the park, mostly for the Hallow-Scream festivities ... and a couple of roller coasters. We went straight to the Loch Ness Monster, which is starting to feel a little dated (as it should) but is a classic.

The "scream" part of the evening was fun too, especially since they had scary clowns, and Kevin has a clown phobia. We REALLY enjoyed dinner at the smokehouse in New France. Also, it was cold. The next day, Sunday, the park was SO dead. We went straight on the Loch Ness without any wait at all. Then we went again. We were trying to get a classic photo to remember our trip by, but we were unsuccessful. The best photo was actually when we went on the lame log flume ride and Kevin was cowering in the back (trying not to get wet). Kevin also convinced me to ride Griffon (twice), which sort of made me feel like I did that time in Vegas on top of the Stratosphere when my life flashed before my eyes. We left not too long into the evening and went back to order room service.

I got back Monday afternoon, and still had neither started my period nor taken a pregnancy test. Although I was pretty sure it was going to be positive by that point, because I am nothing if not regular. For some reason or other, I STILL did not pee on a stick until Tuesday night.

Patrick sees no evil.

It was positive. Yay! ... But after last year, we weren't getting too excited just yet. Next up:

Looking good, but still too early to stop worrying.

Soon after, the baby was already mocking my worry.

Around the time we hit the second trimester (still having told very few people ... except Lark, who is also pregnant and due two days before me, and Sarah, who is also pregnant and due about a month after me), it was time for this:

I still owe him a "3" update, which perhaps I will get to before he turns 38 months old. His 3-year well-child visit isn't until Feb. 22 so maybe that's what counts. (Aside: what kind of primary care provider has a 5-week wait for established patients?)

Then it was Christmas. We did the big reveal at Christmas dinner (at our house) with my parents and Kevin and Chris, Jeff & Megan present. Mom and Chris were super excited. :)

We went up to Asheville to tour the Biltmore Estate after Christmas, but you weren't allowed to take pictures inside (lame) and my mom has the ones of Patrick in the pool on her camera and I haven't seen them. (Hint, hint, MOM, if you're reading this.)

I felt like this baby was a girl. The Chinese lunar calendar said so. I was super sick at night. I felt way worse than I ever did with Patrick during the first trimester. I normally don't trust my intuition because I'm an overanxious worrywart, and I'm usually wrong. But when we went to the ultrasound, I would have been SHOCKED to discover it was another boy.

And, I was right. And she is not shy. Also, when the tech started the ultrasound, James announced that he saw a giant penis. HA.

So pretty much, that brings us to date. I will attempt to write Patrick's 3 letter as well as obsess over my latest worry regarding the pregnancy. You can't wait. :)

Posted by Molly at 11:14 PM EST

Updated: Sat 02/11/2012 11:16 PM EST

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