Help, Please!

Alright, so the post before, I mentioned something about Zoe and her newfound habit of whining. I realize that in just two weeks this has become a really big deal. I also realize that it needs to be nipped in the bud. But those two things mixed with the fact that she's just 20 months old don't make for a great combination.

So here's where I need you! HELP! Please comment and give me any suggestions you can think of!!

Right now, we're simply getting down to her level, making her look at us, and cutting her whine off with some kind of comment like the ones mentioned in this post. Sounds like a lot, but takes only about 5 seconds to do. Right now, it seems to be working for us to ask her in a stern voice, "Zoe, are you whining right now?". You can actually see the wheels spinning, and the next words out of her mouth are usually non-whiny tones. But..none of those work for more than 60 seconds.

So...what now? She's 20 months, and she understand a lot of what we tell her, but I doubt she'd understand something like an incentive jar or something like that.

So time out after a certain amount of "no whinings" comments? Pops on the legs each time she whines?

HELP!

On the other hand (TOTALLY off subject), I'm now 36.5 weeks along. Three and a half to go! He dropped this last week, and sense then has sat on a certain nerve about half the day. When he does, it creates a nice shooting pain that courses through my belly and leg every time I take a step. Part of the joy of pregnancy, I suppose. It'll all be worth it in three weeks...I just have to keep reminding myself that. I started weekly appointments last week. No dialation as of yet, but according to the OB I now have a "squishy cervix". I sure hope there aren't many guys on here reading this....hmm. So maybe I'll have dialated some when I go on Friday.

Twenty Months going on Fourteen

Because last week we were either out of town or it was raining outside, I had to wait almost two weeks before getting her twenty month pictures. Oh well...

So new developments this month...

1. She has learned all of her ABC's. We're working on the song, but she only gets to ABC and then quits on me. She learned several letters a day while we worked on her wooden ABC puzzle. Over the course of about 2 weeks, she had learned and could identify and call all of them by name. My favorite is W which she pronounces "dibber". Tough word to say!

2. She can count to 10 easily now. Except I say that and for some reason the last week she decided to start skipping 3, and 7 and 8. No clue why...the mind of a 20 month old. *sigh*

3. She had a vocab burst this month and is now talking in full sentences. All of her sentences have at least a subject and a verb...some have more than that. Before this month, she was speaking a lot of 2 word sentences like "sit down". She's now into the 3-5 word sentences so the two worders have now turned into "I go sit down" or "Zoe sit down now". My favorite thus far is "Wuv you too!" in response to us telling her we love her.

4. And the negative of the month is the introduction to THE TERRIBLE TWOS! Every few minutes, one of us is saying one of the following: "Don't whine, please". "Use your big girl words." "Zoe, no whining." "Zoe, are you whining?" "Mommy doesn't like it when you whine". "Zoe, we'll listen to you when you can use your words" "Change your tone, Zoe". Over and over and over.... We're trying to nip it in the bud, but it's proving to be somewhat of a challenge. She'll purse her lips and we know a whine is soon to follow. Amazingly, 75% of the time, as soon as something's said, she'll change her tone immediately and tell us what she needs or wants. But just moments later, she "forgets" and needs to be reminded again...and again...sigh....and again.

5. And my favorite "new" of the month happens to occur only when someone sneezes or coughs. When Zoe would cough, we'd usually out of habit as her "are you ok?". She picked up on that, so anytime anyone sneezes or coughs, she'll ask immediately "k?". The funniest part? She asks herself the same question when she coughs or sneezes.






I swear..this month, it's like I'm looking at a different child. All of a sudden, she just looks like a little girl now. No longer the baby face. *Sniff*

Completed project(s)

So before I show you these pictures, let me remind you that this was 95% the result of the hands of my wonderful husband who yesterday elevated to not just status of "husband of the year", but now "husband of the millenium". Being pregnant really limited what I could do, and having round four of the "stomach stuff" a few days ago limited even more.

So here are the four finished products...although another post will have to come in about a month and a half when we can actually call the nursery a nursery and not a nursery/guest room full of duck duck goose items to sell.

First project to completing Zoe's "new room" as she calls it...the book shelf. And she "helped" her daddy put it together. I'm telling you...Darin's LOVING that she's able to do these types of things with him. These are the day's he's been waiting for as a daddy.

It went from this...



To this...


And finally to this...


And now the virtual tour of her "new room".






Ethan's room is a different story. It's painted w/it's two toned blue colors, but the only items in there are his crib and a set of bunk beds for guests coming to stay once he's born. After those first couple of weeks, we can then transfer the nursery into it's intended purpose and move the beds to storage. Oh...and then there's the bed full of clothes that will be sold in next week's Duck Duck Goose sale. I swear, baby clothes are COMING OUT MY EARS! The swing on top, we're not getting rid of..it's just the only place for it right now.


Coming out my ears I'll tell ya!!! But they'll be gone on Monday.


Then there are the two living rooms. We shut the bigger room off in the winter b/c it's quite large and surrounded by nothing but windows so it gets REALLY cold during the winter despite the vents blowing heat to it. Saves about $60 a month in heating bills (seriously!) We call it the Arkansas room b/c it is the temerature that it is outside.


The desk is an unfinished projects by itself, but it'll be straightened up today.



Then there's the second living room...the one that had all this in it temporarily just a day ago. Remember this picture??!!


Now it looks like this! Ahh..clean!




So there you have it, folks. A virtual tour of half our home and the understanding of why my husband is now the husband of the millenium!

G.G.G!

So after looking at a friend's blog, I decided to borrow her post idea and tell a story using pictures.

So here's our day #2 journey.

Day starts out...with round 4 of "hugging the toilet". I'll spare you a picture of that one. GOOD GOLLY GEEWILIKERS (hence the title)! Have I mentioned how tired I am of this stuff??? This time was less than an hour, but an entire day of recuperating. ARG! For those of you who missed that post, look at this post .

So the remainder of the day looked like this:

First off, Ethan's due in just 4 weeks, so we had to get rooms ready.

We moved Zoe from here




to her "big girl room".

Not totally decorated yet...fully decorated pics to come.


But before we could do that, we had to do this...



Yes, once all of the contents of what once was a spare bedroom were emptied temporarily into our living room, we moved her in. Super easy transition!

Then it was time to do this...

"All ready to paint, Daddy!"





And after painting over this...



We have this...



Notice tape is still on the wall and the crib is still in the middle of the room covered up. I'll post a picture when it's all complete and decorated.

And after a hard day's work...a little of this...




And I must clarify...by "we", I mean Darin. He was responsible for 95% of what you saw. Since I was recouping from "round four", I did very little. Not that at almost 36 weeks pregnant I could do much anyway...

Field Trip...Everyone in the Van!!

Ok, so it may not have been a very happy field trip. I just wanted to sound like all the other bloggers who are taking vacations and doing fun things this spring break. Let me just say this wasn't the must fun way to start ours. :-(

So this post is what started it all. Apparently, through the hour and a half of running through bubbles and throwing frisbees, she got into some ants. I guess, but I don't know. I didn't see anything when I gave her a bath that night. Anyway, yesterday after church, I changed her and there were four nasty looking bug bites surrounding her little ankle. They were a little swollen, but they were all clumped together too. Put some hydrocortisone cream on there and didn't think anything else about it.

4:00PM - lots of itching. LOTS of fussing and a little fever (though we'd been fighting allergies the last few days). Hmm...starting to wonder... Gave her benadryl and put on more cream. She'd been scratching them, so they were leaking clear fluid. Still didn't think too much about it.

7:00PM - Hmm..look a little swollen but not too bad. Not so fussy anymore b/c we put her down for another "rest" time at 5 and she slept for 40 minutes (this never happens, folks). Bites still just looked irritated from scratching. BUT...becoming more aware....

8:00PM - Bedtime. Took clothes and shoes off and WHOA! Bright red, puffy, swelling traveling all the way around her ankle and down her foot. Great, now what?

Didn't take Darin and I long that this warranted a trip to...the ER. We just didn't feel like it was good to wait until morning to take her to the doc since the swelling and redness came on that quickly.

So in we go...very pregnant and waddling lady, daddy with a headache, and barefoot girl in PJ's w/swollen ankle. I'm sure we looked picture perfect. Turns out the bug bites had created a type of staph infection, no biggie as long as it's treated properly. We're on antibiotics and will have a check up appt. with our family doc tomorrow. Now the trick is keeping her from scratching to keep it from spreading. That's going to be fun.

Afterwards, I ran into walgreens and bought some benadryl cream which was recommended by the ER doc and also purchased some gauze wrap. We wrapped her foot last night and taped it, then put a tall sock over all that to keep her from scratching at night. Doesn't seem to bother her at all and she's feeling great today. Bites are still red, but not worse than they were last night.

Crisis averted! Little trooper is on the mend!

"WANT MORE BUB-BLES!!!!"

Despite the cooler temperatures (not even close to the projected daily high of 75 degrees), we loaded the van with charcoal, buns, turkey burgers and the fixin's, chips, water, some chairs, a Frisbee, and some bubbles of course, and headed to the lake. And by we, I mean Darin, Zoe, and myself plus two others who were staying with us for the night...we instantly became "parents" of a teenager and a preteen.

"Want more bubbles" is what we heard over and over and over again from our bouncing 20 month old. She'd let them pass her and then go chase them down, throwing herself amidst a dozen or so bubbles and giggling the whole time. Occasionally, she'd even get a treat and swallow one...Gag!!






So I couldn't really tell....do you think she liked them??

Then, after tiring of bubbles (oh, an hour or so later), she wanted to throw the Frisbee with the big boys. So Darin gave her the top to one of our plastic plates and let her go to town. She would swing her arms wildly back and forth and then let go, usually causing it to fly somewhere behind her. Looks like a pro, doesn't she?



And to end the bubble and Frisbee fun...FOOD!

A look inside my mind...might be a little scary!

The top ten things running through my mind this morning...

10. It's almost SPRING BREAK! Not that it affects me, but I get my husband home for a week.

9. After all the days my husband has missed work for me over the last month, holding me while I cried from the pure exhaustion of throwing up for hours on end, not complaining that he was taking on his full time job plus my full time job, trying to keep the house clean during that time, etc, etc, etc, I went and bought him this cheesy little award at the Dollar Tree while I was out running errands. It hung in the refrigerator for him to find last night. He smiled, laughed a little, and here it still hangs. :-( Oh well...I got my message across.


8. I'm now a day away from being 35 weeks! 35 WEEKS! That means just 5 to go!!!! (34 week picture)

7. I'm wondering if periodically waking up around 4AM b/c of heartburn and babynastics (formerly called gymnastics) only to lay in bed unable to go back to sleep is going to become the norm.
This would be what I saw right before I FINALLY fell asleep!

And this would be my wake up time......

6. Because of my short 4 hours of sleep....this would be what I look like today.


5. Laundry awaits me today...mountains of laundry, vacuuming, etc etc etc...(what happens while I'm sick and don't do any during the course of several days). And again, because of 4 short hours of sleep, I'll probably look something like this...


4. It's now been a week since we had that precious little lost dog in our home for a night...and a week since my poor husband cleaned (not so solid) poop 6 times off of our floor. Yet another reason he earned that ribbon! Wonder if he's in a new home being loved on yet.

3. Today is a great day just to relax, don't you think?
Or maybe a great day to get one of these...ooohhh yeah!


2. I'm not normally a moody person, but the last few days b/c all that's been going on I've been a bit moody. I don't even like myself when I get this way...my poor family!

Drum Roll Please......

1. Top thought of the day!! Well, there are two, really.

a. I really wish I was doing this....

b. Have I mentioned I'm 35 weeks?? Yeah...so that being said, here's the scene that best describes me.