Potty Update

Oh, the potty update.

Good news: Balian has pretty much officially stopped pooping in his diaper. The only time we have a (very rare) messy diaper is if I don't hear him right away when he wakes up in the morning, and I take too long to get him to the potty. Makes sense. He's still young, and can only hold it so long ;) Other than that - during the day, no poop. (I think we've only had 1 messy diaper in the past 2 weeks or so...) Life is fabulous.

Bad news: Balian is definitely not catching on to the potty thing as quickly as Bella did. I suppose it's to be expected. I've always heard that it takes longer for boys than girls. It's just crazy - At this point (14 months) Bella was fully trained during the day, minus naps. She would tell us when she needed to go and everything. Yes, it is definitely different with Balian. I don't think it really phases Balian to be wet at this point. He loves to sit on the potty (he'll sit on there forever!), and when he goes, he gets really excited and claps for himself - he just hasn't developed the understanding of what it feels like BEFORE he goes, and therefore the muscle control yet to be able to hold it until we get to the potty. He knows WHEN he's going. He feels that - and sometimes grunts when he does it. I guess it's just a matter of time and patience.

Not that it really interferes with life too much. We're just sticking to the routine until he shows some signs that he's ready to move forward. We've got the poop thing down, yes....but we need some signs (like, discomfort when he's wet, or showing that he's trying to hold it, etc.) that he's ready to move beyond wet diapers all the time before we transition to anything else but the routine.

Of course, if any of you have trained boys early (less than 18 months), I'd be open to suggestions that worked for you. They're just so different than girls :)

Pecan Harvesting

Our neighborhood is set on an active pecan plantation. Because of this, we have 9 Pecan trees in our yard...and this was our first year to harvest all of those pecans. Luckily, however, we have resources to help us out. Down the street we have a place that rents out harvesters that pick up pecans a LOT faster than we could on our own. They also buy our pecans from us. We were able to take them our pecans - shells on, leaves all in them - and they "cleaned" them, then weighed them - and cut us a check based on that weight. AND what's even better - they shell pecans and sell them right there - so we can take the money that we earned and turn around and buy whatever shelled pecans we want for the year. How much easier could it get?

Anyway, it took us about 2 days of work to harvest all of our pecans - which ended up totaling about 200 lbs. (clean) total! Insane! And we still have some pecans in our yard...and some trees haven't given all of their pecans up yet :) It was a good experience. Bella liked that she could help push the harvester, Balian liked stealing the pecans and playing with them, I liked being outside working and playing together as a family all day, and Neil liked that we got paid to clean up our yard!

23 weeks

This picture was taken at about 20 weeks...oh well. It's the newest one I have.

We had our 2nd ultrasound on Monday. It was odd to not find out what we're going to have, and HARD not to look too! But I'm excited about being surprised. Everything about this birth is going to be so different...and I'm excited about it all.

I love to watch my babies during the ultrasound. They usually have mannerisms that they continue to have after they're born. Bella likes her hands in her mouth...Balian crosses his ankles all the time... This baby was laying it's hand over it's face - so cute...perhaps we'll see he/she sleeping like that once it's out :) The baby also had the hiccups. so cute :)

Everything looked good. due date is right on with the baby's measurements - March 20.

We also had a prenatal appointment with the midwife yesterday. Everything went well. urine looked good, I gained about 2 lbs. in a month, and I'm measuring about 1 week large for the first time ever. ha. One kinda funny thing that happened - the midwife-in-training was having a hard time finding the heart rate...so the midwife came over, felt around on my belly, put her finger where she thought the heart should be, and sure enough, she was right on the money. Ha. makes me laugh every time. She said that my next appointment they'll have me check out a book about baby positioning, so that I can tell exactly what the baby's position is at all times - and what's digging into my side as well ;)

We did check out a video on water birth - just to look at it as an option. Interesting stuff. Didn't seem as messy as I thought it would...and the most interesting thing to me is that none of the babies came out screaming - they were all definitely alert, but as calm as could be. Something to think about.

Running: I've probably averaged running about once per week. Not as much as I would like, but doing anything is better than what I've been able to do before at this point, so I'm excited. Perhaps with it getting colder, the treadmill will get more use and I'll run more often - we'll see. I'm going at about a 12 min. pace for about 3 miles at a time right now. The biggest problem has been my knees hurting, but I think that mainly has to do with going slower and therefore shortening my stride. That always makes my legs hurt. I'm sure more weight putting pressure on joints has something to do with it too, but when I run the pace I really want to (my comfortable pace - faster) my knees don't hurt. I have discovered that the Belly Bands that you can use to help wear pre-pregnancy pants longer is a great belly support for running. It holds the belly in a bit, so there's less bouncing, and that means being overall more comfortable...and less potty breaks too.

Circle Time

We've gotten settled into our homeschool routine for Bella, and every morning we start out doing what we call circle time. It's called various things in preschool. circle time. rug time. carpet time...whatever. we should really call it Hallway time, since we do it in the hallway, but o-well. We start out by doing our days of the week, then talking about today (day of the week, month of the year, date), then we do Bella's bible verses, go over the letter of the week (this week it's the letter I), read our bible story, and maybe even sing a song or two about the season, or what we're learning about. Bella looks forward to it every day. After circle time, we do our "school time" where we paint, write letters, do activities, or whatever...but circle time apparently is her favorite :) Here's some things that she has been learning:
Days of the Week:

Bella's Bible Verses

Counting to 30: this one she's still working on a bit, but she's doing pretty good.