Weekend at Jenn’s and Good Riddance Paci!

A few weekends ago, we took a weekend trip to Huntsville to spend time with my best friend, Jenn (or Aunt JJ as Austin calls her). When Jenn and I plan a weekend together, it takes weeks of planning, editing of packing lists and menu organizing for us to feel as if we have everything together. We’re the same when it comes to planning and making lists, so the sooner we start, the better the chances are that we’ll remember everything. And I have to say, to have packed as much stuff as we did, we didn’t forget one single thing! It’s amazing how much you have to pack for a toddler, especially one who is potty training! Side note: he’s doing great on potty training and after having his first full day of dry diapers the day we left for Huntsville, we graduated to pull-ups during the day!

We left after work on Friday in a hurry and of course got stopped on the interstate – not good for my nerves or anxiety! It apparently wasn’t good for Austin’s either because he was in the backseat saying, “Drive Daddy!” My thoughts exactly, buddy! We got there around 8:00 and the plan was to eat pizza, let Austin and JJ play for a bit in the backyard so he could see the pool he was oh so excited about and then put him to bed ASAP. Some other friends of ours were there with their 5 year old girl and she was in her bathing suit ready to swim. Austin was so excited about the pool and watching her swim that he really didn’t care to eat much. We let him stay up WAY past his bedtime so that he could have fun with everyone, not to mention we knew he would put up a fight if we tried to pull him away from the fun to take a bath. So he saw his latest bedtime ever at 10:30.

We hoped that he would sleep a little later since he got in bed so late, but I’m not sure what we were thinking. By 5:20 he was wide awake. I tried to get him to lay back down with me but by 5:45, it was obvious that getting up was inevitable. All he could talk about was playing in the pool. So by 6:00, Austin and Justin were in the pool and Jenn and I were outside with them. Apparently the water was freezing because Austin was shivering and his lips were blue, but of course when you asked him if he was cold he said no. Luckily, he took Justin’s advice and got out after about 15 minutes.

While we waited for the sun to heat up the pool, we ate breakfast, watched cartoons, played outside and just hung out. Around midday, Austin couldn’t stand it anymore and was ready to get back in. Jenn and I got to lay out for a while until Austin wanted me to swim with him. I was reluctant because I knew how cold the water would be, but there was no way around it. Once I got in and got used to it, it was fine. Austin had a great time swimming all afternoon and even playing in the sprinklers. Since he never took a nap, we put him to bed very early at 6:00 so that he could catch up on sleep. He didn’t put up a fight either, so I’m sure the lack of sleep, plus the sun and swimming all day finally caught up to him.

It apparently caught up to the adults too because by 9:30, half of us were already in bed with the other two quickly following. Austin gave us another 5:30 wakeup call on Sunday, so we snuck downstairs to watch cartoons while everyone else slept. Justin was able to get a few extra hours for Father’s Day, so when he got up Austin and I gave him his cards. We’ve started letting Austin pick out his own cards, which ends up being hilarious! My Mother’s Day card had ducks on it and Justin’s card had a motorcycle. After we ate breakfast and sat outside on the deck for a while, we went ahead and packed up to hit the road. We drove for 8 minutes before Austin was asleep! We got home around lunch time, started a load of laundry and then went to Justin’s parents for a Father’s Day dinner.

The following night, Austin and I were going through his normal bedtime routine and sat down in the glider to read his books. This is normally when he asks for his paci. Since we cut them, he still wants it at night and at naptime so we planned to cut them again the weekend after going to Huntsville. He took me by surprise though and never asked for it while we read. When I put him down and walked out, the first thing I told Justin was that he never asked for his paci so be prepared for him to start crying for it any minute. But he never did. He didn’t ask for it the next night either. After a few nights, he randomly asked for it but I told him that I didn’t know where it was and that he had fallen asleep without it the night before. That answer seemed to satisfy him and we’ve been paci free ever since!! Hallelujah!!! I was beginning to think this day would never come! I’m so glad that he weaned himself and we didn’t have any tumultuous nights of crying for hours by going cold turkey. Although he kept it much longer than we wanted, I’m happy with the way he basically gave it up on his own. Let’s hope it goes this smoothly for Sawyer Baby!

Moving Baby, Stomach Bugs, Hospitals and Gender Reveal

Now on to the pregnancy update for the month of May. I started feeling the baby kicking and moving on the outside on May 3 and Justin was able to feel it the very next day. At first I thought I was imagining it because it seemed so early, but when Justin felt it I knew it was real!

On Mother’s Day, we drove up to my grandmothers for lunch and had to stop by the Galleria on the way home. About the time we got there, I started feeling nauseous. It was very unusual because I hadn’t experienced any nausea for weeks now. Justin kept telling me I just ate too much, but I knew that wasn’t the case! We took Austin to ride the carousel and as soon as it started moving, I looked over at Justin and told him how sick I felt. By the time we got home, all I could do was lie on the couch and feel miserable.

Justin gave Austin his bath and put him down and finally about 9:30 I decided to just go to bed. It had not eased up any so I figured if I was asleep, at least I wouldn’t feel it. I had barely gotten into the bathroom before I started throwing up. Justin walked in to witness the tail end of it and when I finished, he said hopefully that would make me feel better. It did for the moment, but something was telling me that it wasn’t over. I got in bed, but couldn’t really sleep because of the way my stomach felt. About an hour later, I was back in the bathroom. At that point, it was obvious that I had been bitten by the stomach bug.

The night was miserable, as you can imagine, and I barely got any sleep. Justin stayed home with me the next day and I spent most of the day trying to keep down Gatorade in between bathroom visits, while also trying to catch up on sleep. I got out of bed late in the afternoon and decided to try to hang out on the couch for a while so I could at least see Austin. I hadn’t thrown up for a while so I was thinking that the worst part of it was over. I decided at about 5:00 to try some more Gatorade and a few crackers, but as soon as I ate them I started feeling sick again. By 6:30, the vomiting had returned.

I tried really hard to go to work the next day, but because I had not been able to keep anything down, my body was extremely weak. I decided it would be best to call my doctor and see if I needed to come in and get fluids. I had a stomach bug during week 21 with Austin (this was occurring during week 20) and I ended up in the ER getting fluids, potassium, etc. So I had a feeling that going into the hospital was in my future. Sure enough, the nurse said I needed to come in for an ultrasound and to be evaluated. The ultrasound kinda took me by surprise because I was two days away from my 20 week ultrasound where we would get to find out the sex. Now I was going to possibly find out sooner, while Justin was out of town! When I told him this, we agreed that if I found out the sex, I wouldn’t tell him so that he could be surprised two days later.

I went in and the doctor ordered the ultrasound and told me as soon as it was over, I needed to go to the perinatal unit to be admitted. Admitted?!?! I wasn’t expecting that. I got a good report at the ultrasound that everything was fine and the baby was doing great. I also found out the sex – another BOY!! And of course, I was able to keep that secret from Justin for approximately one hour! As exciting as it was to finally know what we were having and not have to guess any longer, it was revealed in a way that wasn’t so exciting. In a way, it kinda spoiled the whole reveal b/c Justin and I weren’t together, and I was so sick that it was hard to enjoy the moment without him there. My friend Marsha was with me, but it just wasn’t the same. Not to mention, I was pretty sure it was a boy anyways so it was more of a validation of my feelings than a big reveal/surprise. Not that I’m complaining – my baby boy is healthy and that is all that matters!

I went up to the perinatal unit and went immediately into a room. They started me on fluids and lab work pretty quickly. I was on my second bag of fluids when the doctor came in about 5:45. I was expecting to be discharged then and she made it seem that if I was still feeling okay, that I could try some chicken broth and if I kept it down I could go home. But at about 8:45 after giving another urine sample, I was given the bad news that I was most definitely spending the night. I was barely peeing, which was unusual after the fluids I had been given all day. My ketones were still extremely high, which prompted them to change my third bag of IV fluids from a saline based to a glucose based drip. I was given an Ambien to help me sleep and after a visit from Marsha late that evening with some toiletries, I went to sleep around midnight. I slept pretty solid considering I never had to get up to pee (which showed me how dehydrated I still was) and once I ate breakfast, I was discharged around 10am.

My 20 week ultrasound the next day was not quite as exciting as we had expected, only because the gender was no longer a secret. He is sitting extremely low, basically his head is right on top of my bladder, so we didn’t get any good profile shots like we did with Austin. Although he is so low, I won’t complain about it considering Austin never dropped! I hope and pray this baby boy stays right where he is because he is already in the perfect birthing position.

We also decided on a name – finally! Our girl name has been in the bag for a while now but the boy name was still a big debate. We let Austin help us pick between two names we both liked, and so our new baby boy will be named Sawyer Ryan! Ryan is Justin’s middle name, so Austin has a middle name from my side of the family and Sawyer has one from Justin’s. Hearing Austin say “Baby Sawyer” or “Brother Sawyer” melts my heart because it is the cutest thing ever. He loves to kiss my belly and says “I kiss Baby Sawyer!” and kisses right on my belly button. If you ask him what his little brothers name is, he says “Sawyer Baby”.

Towards the end of May, we were able to see my belly moving, which is one of the things I love the most about pregnancy. Feeling it is one thing, but feeling AND seeing is so amazing! Justin and I get such a kick (no pun intended) out of watching him go crazy in there! It’s hard to believe this pregnancy has gone so fast and that I’m already over halfway there. We will be meeting our little Sawyer Baby before we know it!!

My Little Einstein and Farewell Paci?

We didn’t have much going on during the month of May, but of course there’s always something to update about, whether it be Austin or the pregnancy. I’ll start off with the Austin updates.

I’m constantly amazed at how smart he is. His teachers are always telling us that he is “freakishly smart” for his age, which is a funny way to put it but a compliment nonetheless. His speech and vocabulary are things that they are constantly bragging about, and that he only has to be taught something once before he learns it, rather than going over it multiple times. That is something I have witnessed myself. His memory is impeccable and he blows my mind all the time when he proves it to me.

He loves counting and can count to 20, although when he gets to about 14 or so the numbers all start sounding the same. His new thing has been counting backwards. I heard him doing it in the bathtub one night and it didn’t hit me until he said “Blastoff!” when he was done. I asked him to do it again and he said “Five, four, three, two, one, blastoff!!” It was so cute and definitely awesome to hear him counting backwards.

He knows his shapes and colors, but it seems he does better with shapes. He can even identify octagons and pentagons, but I think triangles are his favorite for some reason! He is still doing great with his ABC’s and is still just as obsessed with reading books as ever.

He has been showing interest in the potty seat again lately so we’ve been working on that. He goes pretty much every night either before or after bath time. They moved him up in class so that he could get more potty exposure, so I’m hoping he’ll be potty trained very soon!

Every night when we rock after reading his books, I sing the same two songs to him: Rock-a-bye Baby and the Alabama fight song. I guess because he has heard them so much, he can sing along with me now. He knows all the words to Rock-a-bye Baby and even though he doesn’t know all the words to the fight song, he knows a pretty good bit to keep up with me. It’s so cute to hear him sing it and I’m glad I started singing it to him when he was just an infant. It’s never too early to learn the fight song!

On May 18th, we decided to cut his paci’s. He still only gets them at naptime and bedtime, but only at home. He hasn’t had a paci at daycare in a very long time. We decided we had to do something ASAP, as we have already let him keep it longer than we originally planned. I also wanted him good and done with it before Baby Vinson II comes along so that he didn’t regress. So that night when we sat down to rock and read, I gave him his paci and with Justin standing in the doorway to observe, we waited for his reaction. It was hilarious!! He kept taking it out and looking at it with this confused look on his face. He would say “Paci broken! Get another one!” And since he knows where we keep them, he asked to go look for them. So we gave him another one and got the same reaction. I was hiding my face behind his blanket and Justin had to turn away because we were laughing so hard. Pretty mean, huh?! But we couldn’t help it! His reaction was just priceless and he was so confused. He finally gave up and just stuffed it in his mouth anyways. He would still take it in and out with a confused look on his face, but he dealt with it. It didn’t go quite as we had planned because I thought he wouldn’t want it with it being “broken”, but I guess we’ll just have to cut it back again pretty soon.

The next day we struggled at naptime. I’m not sure if it had anything to do with the paci or not, but Austin never took a nap. We had the same struggle on Sunday but finally got a short one out of him. Nap time has been a struggle since. I would think that maybe he’s growing out of naps, except when he finally crashes he sleeps for 2-3 hours! Not to mention he still naps at school. Hopefully it’s just a phase though because I really don’t think the paci is the culprit since he still sleeps fine with it at night.

April

I skipped an update for March because it was pretty uneventful. I spent most of the month feeling pretty crappy and just praying to see the second trimester as quickly as possible. I finally hit 13 weeks (second trimester) on March 30 and started feeling much better soon after that. I gained 4lbs during the first trimester, spent a lot of mornings throwing up, spent many days struggling with nausea and food aversions, stayed pretty tired and low on energy – overall just plain crappy.

The only strange thing that happened was that I started feeling like something was stuck in my throat. This went on for weeks and I was convinced that there was a piece of food stuck. No matter what I ate or drank, it never went away. It was beyond frustrating! I finally gave in and made an appointment with an ENT. The doctor ended up sticking a scope up my nose and down my throat to look and see if anything was there. To my dismay, nothing was there. He mentioned that he felt like I had “silent reflux”, especially considering that I was pregnant. I’ve never dealt with reflux, heartburn or any kind of indigestion except for having some heartburn in the third trimester when I was pregnant with Austin, so I assumed this was correct. When I researched silent reflux, one of the symptoms was the feeling of something being stuck in your throat. He started me on Prevacid but warned me that it could take a few weeks to feel any relief.

A few days after starting the Prevacid, I started getting these horrendous headaches. I’ve got some experience with headaches, considering I’ve had three jaw surgeries for TMJ, but I’ve never had headaches like these before. Nothing I took – okay, well Tylenol – gave me any relief. They were so bad, I couldn’t even get out of bed to go to work some days. On a day that was worse than any others, I finally called my doctor. They had me go and check my blood pressure, which was normal, and called in Tylenol #3 for me. I went home and took two expecting to crash (since it has codeine in it), but was more or less wired. It still didn’t relieve my headache, so I was basically forced to deal with it for a few weeks. The explanation was just the change in hormones after changing into the second trimester. I remember having headaches last time, but nothing that kept me from functioning!

On April 16 (during week 15), I had just gotten in bed and rolled into my normal sleeping position on my stomach when about a minute later, I felt that familiar flutter that made my heart skip a beat – the baby was moving and I could finally feel it! When I first felt Austin move, I was at home alone and Justin was out of town so I had nobody to share it with. This time, I immediately picked up my phone and texted Justin to come to our room. He came in expecting something to be wrong, but was excited that we had reached this stage of the pregnancy. As I was lying there, savoring the feeling, it became a little bittersweet. It’s such an amazing feeling, especially that first movement, but I realized that it would be the last first movement I ever felt (considering we aren’t planning to have any more kids). The thought made me sad, but also made me realize that I needed to cherish all of those moments because they very well could be the last.

Week 17 I noticed the dark line making its appearance below my belly button. It was very faint, but enough for me to notice it. I was 18 weeks when I noticed it with Austin, so pretty much right on track with my first pregnancy.

In non-pregnancy related stuff, we celebrated Easter with our families and had a great day. Austin did much better hunting eggs this year and had a lot of fun with the stickers that Nana decorated some of the eggs with. The picture is priceless!

We also took Austin to his first A-Day game in Tuscaloosa, which was so much fun. We first went to the quad to the pep rally and Austin was completely overwhelmed. He had his “serious face” on the whole time, but he was amazed at the band and the “horns”. He’s had a new thing with horns lately, and picking up anything he can, putting it to his lips and making horn sounds, saying “I blow horn, Momma!” We knew he would love the band, but we didn’t expect him to be so serious. After we left there it was time to go into the stadium to try to get a decent seat, hopefully in the shade. We ended up going in about an hour before kick-off and sat right below one of the jumbo-trons. When I say it was loud, I mean it was LOUD. We had to teach Austin how to plug his ears because he did not like how loud the music was before the game. Once the band came in and started playing, he loved hearing the horns. He enjoyed seeing the game, but after the first quarter he was ready to go.

That night, I knew we might have a hard time getting him in bed, just from the excitement of the day. After I put him down and walked out of his room, I heard him in there a few minutes later. Typically once I walk out, we don’t hear a peep from him until morning, so this was a little unusual. I could hear his voice, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. So I went to stand outside his door and could hear him saying over and over again, “Wake up, wake up, wake up AUSTIN!” I stood there and just laughed to myself because the way he said it was so cute. When I heard his paci hit the floor, I knew it was time to go in because he immediately started saying “My paci!!” When I walked in, he stood up and said “I saw horns, Momma!! At football game!!” He was so excited about those horns. I just said “I know buddy, it’s time to go night night.” The next morning when he woke up and I went into his room, once again the first thing he said was “I saw horns, Momma!! At football game!!” I’m pretty sure he probably had dreams about those horns all night.