t-minus 49 days.....

ok so it's been a while since my last post!......every time i say i'm going to buckle down and post more, it fails miserably!......a friend of ours with two little girls (well they're like 9 and 7 now i think) told us she dubbed this time when her kids were this little "the blurry years".......i'm starting to see what she means!.......

so updates first i guess......baby #3's due date is now 49 days away.......some days that seems like no time at all - especially when i think it's the last 49 days of my life i'll ever be pregnant, but other days it literally seems like years away - i just can't imagine getting any bigger, let alone 7 weeks more bigger......it's funny how differently i'm carrying this one and they've all been girls......i'm almost 100% all baby this time - i envied women that looked like they swallowed a basketball but didn't look puffy or prego anywhere else on their body.......last two times i was a puffy hot mess........but this time i haven't gotten too puffy - only in the last week or so have i noticed some very slight leg/foot swelling, but hardly noticable at all......i have stopped envying those swallowed a basketball women - this much weight all in your belly is crazy.......lately i've also felt some cramping/tightening - which i'm not sure if they're those braxton hicks contractions or not - i didn't have any contractions with casey and molly until after my water broke and they induced me.......the monitor they had me hooked up to told me when i was having the first stage of contractions so i never really put much thought into them until they starting hurting like hell......so i'm not sure what to make of these.......wondering if it's a sign i'll be early - fingers crossed on that one!.......i know 33 weeks is a little early to deliver, but sometime in the next few weeks would be perfect with me!.......

ok onto molly updates (might as well go youngest to oldest this post!).......i feel like molly's been constantly sick this entire winter and spring.......we had our first bout with conjunctivitis a couple weeks ago.......molly started it with a pretty bad case of it, then casey got a very mild case and i also got a slight case as well.......as well as they like tylenol and pretty much any other medicine we've ever had to give them, putting that gel into their eyeballs 3x a day for 7 days was definitely not something either of them (or me!) liked........now that that's passed, we're back to a stomach bug along with a fever for molly.......after her follow up visit to the gastroentemologist during which we learned she actually went down one percentile in weight (8th to the 7th), she had 3 consecutive days of barely eating any solid food at all.......today's lunch of mac & cheese was her first real meal and i'm hoping it stays down......good news on that is that she's been drinking like usual, so although the pediatrician advised against dairy, she's been drinking milk and juice so she's still getting some calories.......it might be the saddest thing ever though when she pulls her shirt up and says "betty hurt" (she hasn't quite gotten around to pronoucing her L's) and you know there's no medicine or anything i can give her to make it better.......aside from the sicknesses though, molly's doing great.......she's really coming into her own personality - unluckily for us, she seems to have quite the imp-ish streak.......says "no" pretty regularly and will throw an all out tantrum even before she's hit 18 months old.......she seems to understand when we tell her not to do something, but goes right ahead and does it anyway.......she's constantly climbing onto chairs, then standing on the chair, then getting into anything she can reach from there (climbing onto tables, drinking sodas/coffees that happen to be on said table, playing with the phone, turning off the laptop, etc)......it's a bit maddening at times, but she's so damn cute doing it it's really hard to get mad about any of it.......can't wait till she can understand time-outs!.......she's still an awful napper - we're at 1-2 naps a day lasting anywhere from 20 min to an hour......two 1-hr naps in a day is pretty unheard of........most of the time it's more like one 1-hr nap or two 20-min naps.......she's so incredibly different from casey who was a religious two 2-hr a day napper (totalling 4 nap hours) and who aimed to please us so much that she hardly ever disobeyed once she understood something was "bad".......oh and molly is quite the daddy's girl.......

now for casey.......well since my last post, she turned 3 - which i guess means she's now past the "terrible 2s" and into the "even more terrible 3s" stage.......she didn't really have a "bad" 2s - she only threw 1 tantrum that i can remember, but she did learn "no" and how to let us know if something wasn't what she wanted......but 3 has proven to be a different animal - she's throwing tantrums multiple times a day over silly little things, demanding to do things herself even if she hasn't yet learned how to do them, and overall thinking that what she wants to do trumps what we want her to do........so it's been a bit of a struggle trying to get all these new behaviors under control.......i don't want her to turn into a bratty kid so i'm trying to nip as many in the bud as i can........i find it the most difficult when it seems that i've figured out a way to stop something like a tantrum, then steve or my parents or steve's parents try to intervene and do it either a different way or undermind my method - it gets worse.......so we all either need to get on the same page here or just try to ride the train out until the behaviors pass........she's such a good kid that i can't imagine they'll be around long.......she tries to help with everything and overall is a really happy energetic kid.......she says the most hysterical things - i really should write them all down, but alas, you know how that would go!.......having nothing to compare her to really, i'm not sure if she's super smart or not, but she seems it........she can tell you the first letter of pretty much any word you throw at her........she knows all the letter sounds and all that.......she can count up to about 50 or so........and she's working on writing her letters and identifying numbers (not quite as easy for her as the letters for some reason)......and she can pretty much memorize a book after 1-2 readings of it - and will readily correct you if you skip or mis-pronounce a word (which alternates between being something that i laugh at and get annoyed at!)......

anyhow, that's the kid update........steve is in atlantic city with the poker guys for the weekend......he'll be back tomorrow afternoon thank god - you don't realize how important even one hour of not-being-the-only-parent-time is until you don't have it for a few days......i'll definitely be happy when he's home.......not to say i didn't miss him in my own right, but i've missed sharing the parenting too!.......and at 33 weeks prego, i know i'm not the most patient or fun mom around.......

ok enough for one post!.......hopefully i'll be back before baby #3 comes to give more frequent updates from psychoville......