What A Day!

Yesterday was rather eventful to say the least.  From 6AM til 8PM my day was packed with more than enough excitement.  Some of it I could have done without and other moments I'd happily repeat several times over.

Madeline woke up not feeling well.  Actually, she went to bed on Sunday night not feeling well.  Her stomach had been bothering her, but I figured it was due to lack of sleep from the sleepover party she went to the night before.  Turns out I was wrong.  As soon as we arrived at the admissions department of the hospital where I was having my 20 week ultrasound done, Madeline began to vomit.  Thankfully, she made it to a trash can so she only created a contained mess.  We had no idea that was coming!  I figured that was simply going to set the tone for the overcast day that was supposed to be "Fun in the Sun Day" for Ellie's school.

Fortunately, Madeline's vomiting was limited to that single incident and we were able to do the ultrasound without any extra excitement.  The ultrasound was probably the best one I ever had in terms of clarity.  And I don't know if we're just old pros at this now, but it was the first time Bryan and I were able to fully follow the ultrasound.  I knew what we were looking at before the technician even had a chance to tell us.  Things that caused me worry with the last pregnancy were quickly not a concern for me.  This baby does not have choroid cysts, like Ellie did.  We also got to see the baby's feet and ten perfect toes.  I was pretty far along before I finally got to see Ellie's feet.  We got to watch the baby's heart pump blood with this neat feature that showed the blood in orange as it moved through the four chambers.  The spine and all of the baby's bones were shown in amazing detail.  My only regret is that I was given just three pictures from the ultrasound.  I wish I had a few more.

Finding out the gender was pretty easy.  Our first glimpse of the baby was of the bottom.  I suspected that I knew exactly what I was looking at as soon as I saw it.  Bryan also picked up on it as well.  Minutes later when the tech focused in on finding out the gender she had a perfectly clear view and our suspicions were confirmed.  Unfortunately, the tech didn't realize we would want a picture of this to show family and ten minutes later when she went back to get a picture for us, the baby wasn't being quite so cooperative.  Let's just say that someone enjoys crossing their feet at the ankles.

The night before the ultrasound Bryan wanted everyone to take a guess at the gender.  I honestly had no idea and he wasn't accepting hermaphrodite as a valid answer, so I picked girl since I had scored an adorable girly toy for $2 this past weekend at a yard sale and I really wanted to be able to use it.  Not to mention I love buying dresses.  Madeline and Bryan guessed girl, and Ellie was still holding strong to boy.  The catch with guessing was Bryan said the winners would get ice cream and the loser would have to buy it.  It was a joke, but Ellie didn't like that the guesses were stacked against her.  She insisted that she would not be buying us ice cream if she was wrong.

When we discovered the gender, it turned out that the majority was right.  We're expecting another little girl!  I can't tell you how thrilled I am that I get to add another beautiful little girl to our family.  I spent a good part of the day yesterday digging through the girly clothes that I had saved from when the girls were babies.  Surprisingly, I already have a nice amount of 0-3 month and 3-6 month clothing.  I guess it's a good thing I've always saved my favorite outfits from each size!

Since Madeline was sick yesterday,  I wasn't able to take Ellie to her Fun in the Sun Day.  I managed to find a mom from her class that was willing to look after her and bring her home so she wouldn't have to miss out on the fun.  Having a sick kid at home meant that I couldn't go out shopping for pink things.  I was more than a little bummed.  I spent all this time waiting to find out and then I was stuck in a holding pattern.  I suppose it could have been worse.  We could have gone to the ultrasound and not learned the baby's gender.

Since I had to stay at home, I worked on straightening up the place and organizing baby things while Madeline became one with the couch.  Once Ellie returned home she spent some time going through baby things with me, and that's when I added a little extra fun to my day.  In an effort to avoid tripping over Ellie in the baby's room, I slammed my big toe into a basket that held a bunch of rattles.  End result: basket 1, me 0.  I came away with a toe nail that spilt down the middle about 1/4-1/3 of an inch.  Fun!

After the toe stubbing incident I decided that I needed to direct my focus towards the VBS meeting I was holding last night.  I got everything organized and realized that my attention to girly baby clothes put me a little behind on meeting preparations.  I then rushed to create samples of the VBS crafts for the arts and crafts portion of the program.  I wanted to give the teachers an idea of what the kids would be doing in order to help them in planning their classroom activities.

Somehow I managed to pull everything together in enough time to be prepared for the meeting.  I'm very happy that the meeting went well and that I didn't run over time wise.

Since Bryan's side of the family was still unaware that we are expecting, he posted a picture from our ultrasound last night.  Amazingly, the response from his family has been underwhelming.  It appears that wishing my brother-in-law's dog a happy birthday on her Facebook page is more exciting than a new addition to the family.  Is that not truly bizarre?

Yesterday was certainly a full day!  I'm still riding on a cloud of absolute joy knowing that there's a 90% chance that we'll be welcoming another little girl to our family.

Toothbrushes

I don't know if I've ever had to come out and publicly state my position on the usage of toothbrushes.  But, today, just to make sure my stance on the issue is clear, I will make it known.  I firmly believe that toothbrushes are a single user object, in the same way that toilet paper is a one time use item.  Are we clear on that?  Good.  This morning I asked Madeline to brush her teeth and she tells me that she can't.  Really?  She's been brushing them since the first tooth came in at 10 1/2 months (we do help her to make sure they're clean).  So I ask her why she says she can't do it.  The answer I got was just lovely.  "I don't have a toothbrush." says my lovely Madeline.  So I have to ask if she brushed her teeth before bed last night, and she tells me that she did.  Now where on Earth does a toothbrush that can't walk go between the hours of 9PM and 8:30AM?  That's when she drops the utterly disturbing news on me.  She couldn't find it last night, so she just used Ellie's. Ugh!  Feelings of disgust, repulsion, irritation and righteous indignation on Ellie's behalf washed over me.  I have no way of knowing if Ellie brushed first or if Madeline did.  I hope for Ellie's sake that Bryan brushed her teeth first.  Sorry, but using someone else's toothbrush is just a total personal violation.  I promptly tossed Ellie's toothbrush and replaced it and Madeline's.  Turns out Madeline's toothbrush was on the countertop all along under a headband.

The toothbrush incident and another equally bad incident that was courtesy of Madeline this morning have kicked off what I fear will be a long week.  Bryan flew out to San Francisco this morning and will be gone until Saturday morning.  If this morning is any indication of what the girls have in store for me, I'm going to be wanting to run away by Tuesday afternoon.

I finally heard back from the Religious Ed program at our church.  They're able to give me a class during my preferred session for Madeline, so it looks like I'll be teaching this upcoming school year.  That's scary and exciting all at the same time.  I'm now waiting to hear back on what grades are in need of a teacher.  I'm hoping for a class that isn't middle school aged.

I just spent 4 hours at Ellie's preschool "Fun in the Sun Day".  I think it's safe to say that Ellie had fun.  I'm exhausted and I think I may have a touch of sunburn.  Ellie won two raffle prizes.  Sometime in the next 14 days I'll have to take 10 kids to a local skating center (can you believe the prize expires 14 days after the event?).  Ellie also won a hair cut from the place where I take the girls.  Yay!

It's school fair time of year!

This week is one of those weeks that zips by because it's a four day school week.  Add in two school fairs and a field trip and we're talking about a week that flys!  And, just for fun let's toss a 2nd grade end of year luau planning meeting on top of that.  And I thought I was in for a nice relaxing week.

Today I got a 6:54AM wake up call from the school district.  It was a recording letting us know that the Spring Fair was on for today.  Yesterday we had some cold, miserable, rainy weather.  I was actually banking on either a rained out fair or a chilly day outside.  I was hoping for the chilly day with a side of ominous cloud cover.  The day started off glum enough.  We had cool temperatures and plenty of clouds.  By noon it was warming up but some of the clouds were still kind enough to lull me into a false sense of security.  I decided that a short sleeved shirt and no sunscreen were the way to go.  Five minutes later I pull onto the field to park and realize that it's a little warmer at the school than I expected.  Figures.  We live essentially two blocks from the school, and every single day I find that it's always colder at the school than it is in my front yard.  So, of course, I'm perplexed that it's warmer over there today.  Then the clouds decided that they should make their exit.  As a result, Ellie and I both have sunburn now.  I can deal with myself having it.  I know better and it's my own stupid fault that I have it.  What I can't deal with is Ellie having a burn.  I knew I should have put sunscreen on her before we left, but I started rationalizing all the reasons why I didn't need to.  I wasn't planning to be there for very long, it was cloudy and it wasn't that hot out there.  None of these are or ever will be valid reasons to not use sunscreen when you have very fair skin.  So thanks to me, Ellie has some very red skin.  I have a nice heaping pile of Mommy Guilt.  Someday when my skin cancer ridden daughter granny-dumps me at the worst nursing home she can find and never looks back I'll have no one to blame but myself (let's hope this scenario never actually comes into play).

We had a pretty good time at the fair.  I met up with my friend Amy while we were there.  Her daughter was in Madeline's class last year, and she has a little brother who is around Ellie's age.  Amy and I had a pretty good time wrangling our crazy three year olds and trying to keep tabs on Madeline and Angie.  

I mentioned to Amy that I volunteered to teach a CCD class this year, but I was waiting to hear back from the deacon about it because I was going to have to bring Ellie with me to the class.  I've been trying to figure out if I could get a neighbor to watch Ellie and I would take their kid to CCD with me and bring them back in exchange, but I hate to burden someone like that.  Amy perked up when I told her about me wanting to teach and she actually volunteered to watch Ellie for me provided the deacon will put Angie in the same session that I teach.  How awesome is that?   If the deacon agrees, then Ellie will get to play with her friend every week and I'll get to volunteer like I wanted.  Not to mention, Amy's generous offer just sets off a nice chain of good deeds.  

I'm so happy to be surrounded by such nice people like Amy and my neighbors.  I actually feel like I'm part of a community now.  I haven't felt like this since I moved away from my hometown nearly 9 years ago.  After almost two years in this town, I can now go places and recognize lots of familiar faces on a regular basis.  I love it!