welcome to 3 kids world......

so wow, it's been almost 9 months since i last posted.......and what a whirlwind of a 9 months it's been.......according to my last post, steve had just pulled out nomination papers to run for city council......well the grueling campaign that used up about a grain short of EVERYTHING we had is finally over.......unfortunately out of 2800 total votes, we were 56 votes too short.....mostly for political reasons to boot......the other guy got sworn in a month ago and is still taking pot shots at steve.....while i'm over the exhaustion of running, i'm still not fully over the bitterness of losing to someone so much less qualified and deserving of the job......

also, and more importantly, we have had another kid since my last post......hannah rose was born june 12th......making us the parents of a baby born on the 14th (march - casey), 13th (nov - molly), and the 12th (hannah - june) of the month......makes remembering birthdays that much easier!......hannah's just shy of 8 months old - she's sitting up, crawling, playing with toys, eating baby food and yogurt like it's going out of style......she's an awesome baby.......only really cries when she's tired or hungry......about a month ago we transitioned her into the "kid room" so now all 3 girls are sleeping in the same room......after a rough start, it's working out ok now somehow......hannah still oftentimes (well 2 or 3 times a night) will wake up crying, but it never seems to wake casey or molly up and we just let her cry for a few minutes and she usually falls back to sleep.......it'll be awesome to be back to the confidence of knowing we can sleep through the night soon......

other than those 2 pretty ridiculously huge things, not a whole lot has changed since may.......casey's doing fantastically well - she's super smart (as confirmed by a research study done at her school - she tested at the level of a 5 year 9 month old!)......oh i guess that's also new since our last post - casey started preschool 2 days a week and absolutely loves it......she's at cornerstone campus where our friend gail is the director......she loves her teachers and her new friends......looking into switching schools after this year though to a program that sounds just as good and happens to be free for where we live......if she gets into that, then we'll put molly in cornerstone for 2 days a week......still lots of things up in the air there though.......molly's also doing great - she's just recently started talking up a storm and seems much more able to verbalize things than she used to - although she still stutters a bit getting things out......she's not quite as "happy" a kid as casey - but she's happy enough - and interested in everything and open to whatever.......casey's definitely her best friend.......and she's a good big sister too......

anyway, just wanted to get at least one "quick" post up to hopefully get me back into the swing of writing......hard to find a few minutes these days.......more soon - i hope!.....

proud day......

so i have two people to be proud of today.......my hubby and my big girl casey.......

steve pulled nomination papers for ward 2 councillor this morning - his first official steps of his political career......he was really anxious and slept awful last night, but all went great this morning when we met with the city clerk and he got the paperwork he needed........now we need at least 50 signatures and to return them to city hall in order to offically be on the ballot.......

and i had to go to an impromptu dr appt this morning - had some dampness i wanted to make sure wasn't amniotic fluid and have been super crampy the last few days so called dr and they asked me to come in.......dropped molly off with my MIL, but she didn't look like she was feeling super well today so i took casey with me........well the appt that i thought was going to take 15 min ended up taking 1 1/2 hours and casey was ridiculously awesome for the entire thing.......even through a 20 min non-stress test when i couldn't move because i was hooked up to a baby monitor thingy.......of course i need to thank the inventors of mike & ikes and heart-shaped strawberry frosted donuts with sprinkles for some of her good behavior, but otherwise, it was all my big girl.......

psychoville......

in case anyone is wondering why i called this blog psychoville, here's a sample "perdios to-do list":
- continue cleaning/decluttering/updating our house
- sell our house
- buy another bigger house
- pack all our stuff and move into said bigger house
- run a ward councillor campaign
- win election
- have baby #3
- keep kids 1 & 2 happy and healthy
- steve to study for PE exam
- steve to take PE exam
- steve to pass PE exam
- steve to continue to work his full time engineering job

=)......ah yes, i do remember vaguely being bored sometime about 12 years or so ago........

early?.....

so i went to my OB appt yesterday and got some news that i'm taking to be good news.......
my midwife was surprised at how far down the baby's head was at this point (34 weeks, 3 days) - she seemed to think the baby wouldn't be flipping over anymore, so she's in ready to go mode.......i've been getting lots of sharp pains (although nothing regular or consistent) in my lower belly which i'm also taking as signs that things will be starting soon.......hopefully i won't have to go all the way to my due date.......those last few weeks are really just torturous.......no idea why drs can't just induce you once you hit 36 weeks.......i'm impatient, i know........and i might just regret wanting this baby out once the reality of keeping track of 3 little humans outside the womb sets in, but for now, i just want my body, my energy, and my not-so-crabby attitude back!.......i'm sick of being a huge waddling lump that sits on the couch watching the kids play and the hubby do house stuff.......i want to play and do stuff too!......

kid pics......

figured i haven't posted any pics of the kids lately, so here's some.......

selling our house......

so we've officially put our house up on the market.......it's great to have finally reached this point of repairs and updates to put it up.......it's also a little sad.......this house has been great to us - it was perfect for us for the last 6 years - just now too small to fit our growing family.......it's sad to think that casey and molly won't remember their first home.......lots of memories we'll be leaving behind.......but alas, moving is something we need to do.......so begins the process.......we're trying to sell on our own for now - hopefully it'll save us lots of money not having to pay an agent a commission and whatnot.......i think our house is listed with every free website out there.......i posted a few pictures of our house here so we won't forget it once we've moved!.......once we start showing the house and getting offers in, we'll start more actively looking for our next house......but it could take a while, so no sense spending tons of time looking at other houses until then.......

stay tuned!......

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......

molly's words......

so it took her long enough to say something other than "mama" and "dada", but molly's finally starting to say all kinds of words now.......her favorite is "owl" - which i have to say she pronounces a lot better than you'd think a 15 month old should be able to......her other popular words are "duck" (well it comes out more like "uck" but it's close!), "oscar", "bird", "up", and "yeah"......she's so incredibly soft spoken and has this teeny cute little voice.......i can't wait for her to start chattering away like casey does.......although i could definitely wait on the whining and yelling that casey seems to be into lately!.......hooray for her finally talking though!.......

spring in february......

it's been so incredibly nice out this past week - today it's just about 60 degrees!.......of course it's starting to get a little cloudy and might rain, but still take that over the 20 degree days of recent weeks past......the 5ft piles of snow have dwindled to a mere 3ft and i can see patches of grass and mud in places......i didn't think we'd ever see the snow drifts go away - and they haven't yet, but i'm convinced by july they'll be gone!.......of course the next "wintry mix" storm is supposed to be monday and the temps for the next 10 days aren't supposed to get above the 30s, but i'm grateful for a week-long respite from the winter.......we can make it through the last few weeks of winter!.......come on spring!......

huge.....

i'm officially feeling HUGE......god i am not a "i love being pregnant" pregnant girl......and i still have 4 months to go!!......argh!.......

are you even kidding me???......

so we've just re-emerged from another week of being sick in our house........casey started us off about a week ago with a flu-like bug complete with fever and hacking cough/bronchitis, then it infected molly, then me, now back to casey........i seriously can't even believe we were all sick again.......of course, once again steve gets the bi on being sick - guess it's nice to know one of us has a functioning immune system!......healthy days please be on your way!!.....

beauty......

ok so raising 3 girls in today's society of "beauty is everything" has really been making me anxious lately.......i was fairly confident i could instill 1 daughter with a sound understanding that you need to take care of yourself and your body, yes, but that it's totally not everything.......that your brains, what's inside your heart, and how you treat others are equally, if not more, important things to cultivate.......but teaching 3 girls that and hoping they'll all end up as grown women with self-confidence, good healthy habits, smarts (both book and street), with a kind, good-hearted, humble disposition is more than i feel i can ask for.......there's so much around us that can lead to materialism, body image distortion, eating disorders, and superficiality that it seems nearly impossible that they'll all end up avoiding all that.......and by the time you realize something's wrong, the damage is done and it's really hard to repair!.......steve says there's just as much pressure in today's society for boys/young men, and i'm sure there's some, but i think it's a lot more with girls/young women......i just pray that steve and i will be able to help guide them to rise above all that and know what's really important.......

big girl naptimes ahead!......

today was casey's first day napping without a pull up.......i think she might've been ready for this move months ago since although it's kind of hard to tell, i think most days she wakes up with a dry pull up.......but i wasn't ready to risk her waking up early from her naps with a wet bum and bed before now.......now that molly's napping better (well better for her anyway - most days she does an hour in the morning and almost an hour & half in the afternoon) i'm a little more willing to take on the challenge of dealing with casey's naptime accidents if any should arise......today went flawlessly!.......

not quite ready to do it overnight though since most every morning she wakes up with some degree of wetness in her pull up......maybe when the new baby comes and i'm up 100 times during the night anyway we can try that one!......but for now i'm proud of this baby step my big girl's taking!......

snow......

so we started this winter with a big snowstorm - we got about 12-15" of snow - pretty sure it was the weekend just after christmas.......as every year in new england, it seemed like everyone was complaining about it.......as if this was going to be the one winter in the last 900 years when it didn't snow in massachusetts.......i rolled my eyes at them like i always do......well, fast forward 6 weeks and like 100 inches of snow later........i'm right there with the best of the complainers this year........seriously we've had a storm EVERY week that's piled on a foot or more each time, and the temps haven't been high enough to have any of it melt.......so we're surrounded by like 20 ft snow banks everywhere with no where to put any of the new snow.......and they're predicting 18 more inches over the next two days.......enough already!.......i'm sorry i rolled my eyes back in december!.......please send spring!.......yes, i know, i know february hasn't even started yet!.......ug!......

back on the horse.......

ok, well clearly i have fallen victim to 2 kids syndrome - one of the symptoms being that nothing gets done but taking care of the kids (including updating this blog!)......so rather than attempt now to fill in the blanks of what's been going on since my infrequent last posts, i think i'll continue on from here and fill in when i can......

we just found out this morning that baby #3 is a girl......it was actually really fun finding out.......gave us something different about this pregnancy.......i woke up anxious and nervous and excited about finding out.......of course steve was a bit disappointed with the news, but not overly so at all......he loves the girls so much that he knows his life will be just as happy and full with another girl as with a boy......plus i think we were both so convinced that molly was a boy that we were almost more surprised then that she was a girl, and we sort of dealt with those "never having a boy" feelings back then, so this wasn't as big of a deal........i'm just not sure i want to fast forward to when we have 3 teenage girls in the house.......hopefully we'll have more than one bathroom in the house by then!!.......

speaking of houses, we're still searching for a way to get ourselves into a bigger one.......we're pretty under water with our current house (thank you housing market crash) so between coming up with the difference and getting a down payment together for a new house, it's going to be pretty tough.......we've been looking at some foreclosures around quincy, but really not "seriously" looking until we put our house up hopefully at the end of next month........we still have some things to fix up here before it's showable.......once we start getting offers and whatnot we'll be able to better tell how close we can come to the amount remaining on our mortgage and better estimate how much money we'll need to come up with.......fingers crossed things come together in the next 5 months!......

this pregnancy hasn't been too bad........had some pretty crappy morning sickness early on, but some zofran helped with that.......then we had the infamous stomach bug pass through the house not once, but twice which was really awful.......but otherwise, things haven't been too bad.......the latest "symptom" is a recurrance of the varicose veins i had at the end of my pregnancy with molly........again, just on the left side of my body.......but this time they cropped up about a month ago (so way earlier this time) and the ones behind my knee have been really painful........when i get up from sitting for 10 or more min there's this awful squeezing/tightening sensation like having that blood pressure cuff thing on and it takes a minute or two for it to pass........then everything's fine.......but just very annoying, and worrisome - i'm looking forward to talking to my doctor about it at my next appt on monday........i'm hoping she doesn't tell me i have to stop teaching my gym class.......i've been doing really well with that lately - gotten really comfortable teaching and recently picked up another regular weekly class in addition to subbing a lot too - it's still not a huge addition to our income, but i at least feel like i'm contributing something........

anyway......both girls are napping so i should take advantage of this time and get the kids' stuff together for dad's trip to the mall with them later (while i'm teaching)........hopefully i'll be able to post more often here - i really want to have something for the girls to look back at when they're older about their "early days/years".......

holy crap.......

ok, so while this deserves a longer post.......here it is in a nutshell.......
i'm pregnant again.......
oh yes, holy crap.......

preschool dilemmas......

so do we send casey for 2 years of preschool or 1?.......that's our new decision.......i think we're pretty solid on the place - one of our friends, gail, runs a preschool (cornerstone campus) in quincy and i think that's where we're set on........but casey can't start until next september when she's 3 1/2......but she'll have to do two years since she can't go to kindergarten until she's 5 1/2......so that's two years of paying for preschool ($2900/year isn't cheap!)......but if we wait and only do one year, she'll be 4 1/2 before she starts which seems late to me.......to be honest, i think she's ready now......decisions, decisions.......money, money!......argh!.......do you think we could win the lottery even if we hardly ever play??.......

hmm......

i wonder why toy manufacturers haven't been able to create a toy more entertaining to a 10 month old than my sunglasses.......

casey updates......

the big news is.....CASEY IS POTTY TRAINED!!.......yay!.......i think this is the first milestone that as a parent, i feel i've earned too......it took a lot of patience and fortitude to get casey off diapers.......i think i've said the word potty to her about 9,000 times (not exaggerating!), carrying around a potty seat EVERYWHERE we go isn't exactly a piece of cake, evaluating how much liquid she can have and at precisely what time she can have it (not too close to leaving the house, etc) is kind of a pain in the ass......and i think she was fairly easy relatively speaking (from what i've read and heard from other parents)......one day about a month ago, casey got up from her nap and i said to myself, ok we're done with diapers......we had tried potty training back in may, so the concept wasn't that foreign to her.......i kept her naked on her bottom half and she started going on the frog potty seat we have on the first floor (too hard to run her upstairs every time, espeically with molly crawling around)......she is still using pull ups for naps and bedtime, which are essentially diapers just with velcro sides, but at least for her waking hours she's diaper-less......of course she's had her fair share of accidents, but they're not that frequent and really not that bad to deal with.......i'm so proud of her (and me!).......

casey has also taken up singing.......she could sing her ABCs a while back, but has recently added other songs to her repertoire.......we've sung "Getting to Know You" from the John Lithgow baby CD to her every naptime and nighttime since she was born, and she now sings along with us, and will also sing it solo when requested......if i were more tech-saavy, i'd upload a video of her singing it, but i've since given up on how to post videos to this blog site!!......

casey can be a great big sister.......i say "can be" because there are plenty of times she's really super awesome to molly, but there are times that she can be awful with her.......so, she has the capability to be, but isn't always a great big sister.......she gives molly plenty of hugs, kisses, pats, smiles, giggles, etc.......she brings her toys.......she asks her "whatsa matta molly?" when she cries.......she tells molly that she's cute and she loves her.......she also whacks her, kicks her, steps on her, bangs things off her, bites her and sits on her all sprinkled in between the loving things.......steve and i try to play referee, but it's hard to stop all the onslaughts......especially now that molly's moving and always seems to move TOWARDS casey rather than the logical AWAY from her.......molly's a tough kid though.......she takes most of casey's accidental and intentional abuse really well, usually with just a little cry most of the time......and overall weighing the attacks and the love.......the love definitely wins out.......most days molly's awake when casey wakes up from her nap.......i carry molly upstairs and she giggles the whole way because she can hear casey calling out from her doorway.......casey starts laughing because she can hear molly giggling.......then the two see each other and molly's smile couldn't be any bigger and casey yells, "molly!".......it happens almost every day........it might be my favorite part of the day......i hope it stays this way for the rest of their lives - some bickering/disagreements because they are inevitable, but the love wins out always.......

molly updates......

molly officially said "mama" for the first time last week - although i'm going to pretend that her trend of only saying it when she's really pissed is just coincidental.......

she also officially said "dada" yesterday, and no, it was not said in the midst of a screaming fit - she said that one in a calm playful manner.......hmm.......=)

today molly clapped for the first time ever - it might've been the cutest thing i've ever seen......i'm not even sure i remember when casey clapped for the first time, but molly was so crazy proud of herself it was hysterical......

molly is totally the official most chill baby on the planet - she's fine with pretty much anything......she handles restaurants fine......she handles casey fine......she handles sleeping fine......really the only thing that gets her mad is teething......

speaking of, this child now has 6 teeth.......yes, she is only 8 1/2 months old.......casey was nearing 2 years old when she had 6 teeth (kidding, well sort of - it was definitely well after a year though!).......amazingly having all those teeth really doesn't affect breastfeeding at all.......when she got her first couple teeth it was worse - i think she was just getting used to the sensation of biting - same phase when she would grind her teeth a lot.......but now she's used to it and it really isn't painful at all like i expected it to be.......

i'm shocked that i've been able to stick with the breastfeeding so long.......true for about a month now i've been supplementing with formula (bottles are 1/2 breastmilk and 1/2 formula) because my milk production hasn't been great, but at least she's still getting some of the nutrients and whatnot that they claim is ideal for the first year......and it saves a ton of money - formula's crazy expensive.......we haven't even gotten through one can yet, so i'm psyched about that......

hmm, what else is new on the molly front?.......oh well, she started crawling about 2 months ago, and now she's pulling herself up with ease and "cruising" - walking while holding on.......she can stand with one hand on something and a toy in the other hand.......we're working on standing without holding on, but she's not quite there yet.......

i swear casey is her favorite person in the whole world though.......the two of them will giggle at each other for full minutes.......it's really hysterical.......molly likes to grab whatever is in casey's hands......which results in casey grabbing/pulling it back, but more often than not casey will go get molly something different to play with and they'll enjoy a few minutes of playing next to each other.......of course there are plenty of "leave your sister alone" moments, but the times when they play together are really awesome......

molly looks so much like steve it's nutso......if steve was a baby girl, that's what he'd look like......funny though his baby pics don't look like her........she looks like he does now if that makes any sense.......her expressions, especially her little 1/2 smile thing she does, are all him.......i would've thought i'd be a bit jealous of that, but i'm totally not - it's neat that she looks so much like him......of course he doesn't see it, but everyone says so, so it's not just me!.......

and molly's just learning how to splash and it's definitely her favorite thing to do in the water.......in swim class everyone around us gets wet........in the bathtub, the kitchen floor gets soaked.......it's really funny how much she likes it......

anyway, i guess that's about it for molly updates for now!......