Differences between the First and Second Pregnancies

The first time I was pregnant I was just so enamored with the whole process. Everything was new and shiny and so interesting. Needless to say, the second time around, while still magical, has not been nearly so shiny per say. I have the vaguest recollection of things that I’m supposed to be doing and watching for but I’m just so nonplussed compared to being pregnant with Lucan.

1. I have yet to read any pregnancy or newborn books. I’m fairly certain that we still have the two we purchased when I was pregnant the first time but I have no idea where they are. I have fairly low intentions of actually finding and reading them.
2. First pregnancy: I made elaborate pastel sugar cookies to tell all my coworkers the good news. This time? I bought a couple of cupcakes and said “oh and by the way, I’m pregnant.”
3. I think I broke out the maternity pants the second after I saw two pink lines. There’s no point in suffering people – embrace the elastic!
4. No foods are off limits. Cold turkey lunchmeat sandwiches, sure! A California sushi roll, well that sounds tasty! Nor have I limited or altered my caffeine intake – an afternoon soda to get me through the 2pm slump, dear God – YES.
5. My bladder is doing things now that I only encountered post-delivery with Lucan. I’m not sure why but this is NOT OKAY.
6. We’re not doing any pregnancy classes. Not a one. I did sign Lucan up for a big brother’s class, so at least I feel like I’ll get a partial credit.  (On the flip side, we are taking Working Through Behavior Challenges: God’s Way class at a local church)
7. 90% of the things little sister will own, her brother will have owned first. I’m buying a few nursery and bedding things, but we really don’t need much (besides clothes). I hope she likes tractors and construction equipment.
8. We had a huge gender reveal brunch with all of our families with baby #1. This time we had a nice little family dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and had them write the gender of the baby on our cheesecake plates. And then we texted our families. Real special.
9. There is a very likely chance I’m not going to have maternity pictures taken. While I absolutely loved the ones I had taken with Lucan, I know that we need to save our money and apply it elsewhere.
10. I am so much more tired this time around. It’s probably a combination of being older, not having a nap room at work and trying to keep up with a 3 year-old. The first time around my energy levels bounced back after the first trimester but this time around I was well into the second trimester before I felt like I didn’t need my 5:30 pm nap every day.
11. I’m in the third trimester and I cannot, for the life of me, decide which hospital to have little girl. I know. It’s ridiculous. JUST DECIDE KARA!
12. I knew how to pass my blood glucose screen this time around, meaning not eating THREE bags of fruit snacks an hour before my blood draw. Results? Passed with flying colors – bam! Experience wins again!
13. If my iphone didn’t have an app stating which week of my pregnancy I was in, I wouldn’t have a clue. The math is too hard for me to calculate.
14. It’s probably safe to say that I’m not going to write out an elaborate, single spaced birth plan this time around. My birth plan consists of 1) No C-section 2) Okay with drugs and vacuums. This also assumes that I’ve made up my mind as to what hospital to deliver at.
15. With Lucan, I walked twice a day during my breaks and did consistent yoga twice a week. Baby girl, gets sporadic exercise and a few hot yoga sessions. Speaking of which, I need to stop trying to stand on my head. Lance and Erika made me promise.
16. We had a scare with Fifths Disease early on with this baby (thank you toddler germs) and I heavily protested having to get a blood draw as Lu never actually came down with it. Then at my third appointment when they wanted to do another blood draw, I put my foot down. I wasn’t paying the lab fees for a disease that never reared its head. If this had been baby #1 I probably would have elected for extra testing. Ain't no one got the time or patience for that.

While I promise that baby girl will be adored and fawned over in her own right, I like to think that I’m not nearly as crazy this time around compared with my first pregnancy. This is our own sweet special girlie that was knit together and brought into the world to become part of our family.

Stupid Mistakes by a Rookie Dad and Mom

We also shouldn't be letting Lucan eat crunchy things in our bed.

Below are 7 mistakes that we won't be repeating with Baby Girl.

1. Lance started letting Lucan out of the shopping cart mid-trip. I had a perfectly trained toddler who would contentedly stay in the cart until Lance started giving him the option of getting out and running. I took Lucan to Target one day and he started whining to get out. I retold the tale to Lance once we got home and he replied with “oh, yeah I let him out or give him the option to get out if he wants. #stupiddad
2. Lance gives Lucan the option to walk or be carried anywhere we go. I firmly told Lance to knock this off because 1) we’re having a second kiddo and I can’t carry a car seat and a toddler 2) I don’t want to carry a 35 pound child and be 9 months pregnant.
3. Lance lets Lucan be the one to hit the button on the garage door remote. Cue epic meltdown if you happen to forget and hit the button yourself.
4. Chocolate milk. On the rare occasion I wanted chocolate milk, I could drink it without it being an undercover, covert operation. Now if Lucan even glimpses the bottle of chocolate syrup, all bets are off. We’re ALL having chocolate milk.
5. Car treats. Originally I started putting a treat in the cup holder in the front seat of the car because would want to climb around and explore. But if he found a “treat” he would get distracted by it and willingly get in his car seat without incident. This got me stuck in a never ending loop of scrambling last minute to find Lu a special treat and Lucan feeling entitled to candy, etc. I also hide snacks in the car which has Lucan on a never ending scavenger hunt. And I'm not talking about the dropped pieces of Annie's Bunny Grahams.
6. Letting Lucan have way too many snacks after I pick him up from daycare. Like somewhere in the neighborhood of three (popsicle, cheese stick and wild card). And yes, he has a snack at daycare too and his “car treat” to boot. That one is purely my fault.
7. Not trusting your instincts. If you feel like something is wrong, than you’re probably right. Case in point: bad daycare, being told by our first pediatrician that we were overfeeding Lucan (lies, you can't overfeed an infant), knowing that pull-ups weren't going to help potty training.

Pregnancy Update: Week 26

We matched in our chambray :) Cute photo bomber!

 Weeks: 26

Trimester: Second, one week away from the third trimester

Gender: GIRL!

Name: Ha, like we even know. I tried to make a go for the name “Eden” but Lance hates it.

Baby's Size: One and 2/3 pounds

Cravings: Root beer floats. Sweet creamy goodness. The occasional pickle.

How I'm Feeling: More energy than first trimester (thank goodness, I don’t think Lance thought that I was ever going to make supper again and I think Lucan thought that the baby and momma must need a lot of rest.) But about mid-second trimester I started developing more lower back and left hip pain which seems to go hand in hand with a protruding belly. After walking around the Iowa State Fair all day, I thought that I was going to keel over and die. I’m just trying to be mindful of not overdoing it. 

Sleep has been good, just never enough of it. Rolling over is quite the process these days and will only get worse. I miss sleeping on my back. 

I do seem to be doing a few absentminded things which can only be attributed to needing more sleep and baby brain. For example, I wrote out Lucan’s daycare check to the wrong daycare. I completely got the wrong day for a chiropractor appointment. Forgetting treats I made for treat day on the counter at home and having to go back for them. Burning a pan of bacon to a complete charred mess. Silly things that usually I’m much better at remembering to do.

Movement: Little girlie seems to think tap dancing on my bladder is a fun activity. Not a fan. Or she tries to stretch up into my ribs making breathing hard.

Wearing: 90% maternity clothes, 60% mine, 40% borrowed from friends. I love having gracious friends to loan me their clothes. There are some looser or stretchier things I’m wearing that are non-maternity, but as I’m rounding into the third trimester, my thought is, why bother?! Embrace elastic people! No one is impressed by the fact that you uncomfortably compressed yourself into your pre-pregnancy clothes. I wearing lots of dresses because dresses = no waistbands. I’m not sure what I’m going to wear when it starts getting cold outside because 80% of the maternity pants I own are jeans.

Momma thoughts: I am amazed by different people’s reactions that this baby is a girl. Some of them are outright overjoyed by the fact. And yes, while we feel extremely lucky to have a boy and a girl, there would have been nothing wrong if this baby had been a boy too. So moral of the story people, be excited that it’s a healthy baby. Not that it’s a healthy baby girl.

I filled out a Target online baby registry. Not that I have expectations for anyone to actually buy me anything or throw me a shower, but it’s a good way to keep track of things that I want to get for baby girl. 

Picking garden produce with a pregnant belly feels like a punishment. Seriously. It's too bad that Lance's color blindness really impairs him from knowing which tomatoes are red and which are green... 

We canned a small batch of salsa two weekends ago and it also felt like a punishment. Lots of standing. Boiling water. Hot kitchen. Not a good time. We'll see how much I feel up to come apple time.

Nursery thoughts: We officially moved Lucan out of the crib this weekend. It’s a convertible crib and we had taken off all the sides months ago, but we finally bit the bullet and bought him new bedroom furniture in preparation for the crib to be girlie girl’s. Lu’s having fun sleeping in his new "big boy" bed and enjoys tucking all of his animals in. But it’s nice to be making steps forward to getting ready for baby girl (or as Lu has named her this week “Paco”).

We’re keeping Lucan in his present room and turning the guest room into the nursery. I haven’t purchased anything yet, but I’m trending towards a grey and pink theme. Light pink, light grey. Grey walls with one wall that is grey and white horizontal stripes. Lance readily agreed, which I was a bit surprised by. I wonder if there’s any way I could convince him to install a chandelier...

Placenta problem update: at my last appointment and ultrasound things had remained largely unchanged. My patient OB-GYN (best doctor ever!) explained to me while there is nothing that they can specifically pinpoint that caused this “spot” on my placenta and nothing that can be done to resolve the spot either, as long as the baby keeps growing and the “spot” doesn’t increase in size they aren’t going to be too concerned about it. I will have another ultrasound in September to check everything out but if things remain unchanged they will discontinue the ultrasounds. Which is fine, I’m already getting a little concerned about how much more this pregnancy is going to cost.

Exercise: I'm still doing some yoga  and bike rides and irregular walking and running about with Lucan. I took Lu on a tricycle ride the other night (he rode and I walked) and there were times where I felt like I was getting a side ache from trying to keep up with him. Pregnancy is slowing me down. 

Toddler "Calm Down" Glitter Bottle

Isn't it pretty?

The tantrums that our toddler throws are real and very much alive. Cue this sensory "calm down" bottle I've seen popping up on the web and on pintrest. This magical bottle has been credited with helping kiddos calm down mid-tantrum simply by having them watch the pretty swirling glitter settle to the bottom. Cut to the part where this desperate momma thinks "this is the key to ending tantrums." Ha. I'm such a naive first-time mom.

Lucan does really like his glitter bottle and will shake it and play with it when he's happy. He's gladly showed it to several different visitors who have appropriately "ohhhed and ahhhed" over it. But when I tried to give it to him mid-tantrum, he promptly chucked the whole thing at my head. Not really the point of the "calm down" part. #realworldmom

But if you feel inclined to make one for your child to help them calm down mid-tantrum, far be it from me to stop you. Just don't expect miracles like I did. Foolish mommy.

The trickiest thing I encountered was finding the water bottle I wanted, which is a bottle of Artisan Voss Water, checking in at $1.47. The only place I could find it was in the health foods section of the Hy-Vee on Jordan Creek Parkway in DSM (for all you locals). Lance asked me what the bottle of fancy water in the fridge was for. I felt a little foolish telling him that I had bought it for the packaging and less about the contents. I had remembered a past co-worker ordering a bottle of Voss Water at a Christmas party in 2007 at Trostel's Dish, but I wanted to avoid going to a restaurant and ordering a bottle of water and walking out. Hy-Vee seemed like a better option. Turns out, Voss has started packaging their water in plastic bottles instead of the glass bottles I remembered. For my purposes, this probably is a plus rather than a minus. You can use any sort of container or water bottle or jar, but I wanted one that didn't scream "upcycled spaghetti jar."

The rest of the supply list include a bottle of Elmer's blue glitter glue ($2.99 at Target) and two vials of loose chunky glitter ($1 for both of them) found in the dollar section at Target. And hot water.

Step 1. Remove water from bottle and any gummy labels. 
Step 2. Using about 1/3 of your bottle of glitter glue, squirt into your bottle. (I've read to use anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 of the bottle of glue. I used more like 2/3 of the bottle, which I probably shouldn't have. The more glue you use, the longer it will take for the glitter to settle to the bottom = antsy toddler)
Step 3. Add hot water (I just used hot tap water and ran it for a couple of minutes) and shake rapidly to incorporate with the glitter glue. Hot water makes it easier for everything to come together.
Step 4. Add in your chunky glitter to your liking.
Step 5. Fill the rest of the bottle with water.
Step 6. Shake vigorously and enjoy your falling glitter! 

I hope you feel calmer after making this. I brought it to work for all of my co-workers to play with and they are all planning on making ones for themselves. So even if it doesn't work for your toddler, it might help the adults in your life :) It's a partial pintrest win.

True Confessions: a month of budget fails.

I know that I have a tendency to be equally encouraged by people’s budget fails as their good deals. That’s the nice person I am :)

 

But realistically, sometimes it’s a good reminder to see other people’s humanity and erring ways. Most months we do pretty well when it comes to our budget. There’s usually not a ton left at the end, but I view it like tax returns: as long as I’m not in the red, close is pretty good because it means that we accurately predicted exactly where we should be. 

July, on the other hand, was a majorly red month. I knew that July would be a more expensive month because I needed to buy a couple of wedding and shower gifts, but I didn’t plan for anything else out of the ordinary. Normally we get by just fine on those types of assumptions. What we didn’t plan for was the Grand Am to die in the middle of a busy intersection over the 4^th of July. So we certainly didn’t plan for almost $340 in repair work or another $260 in replacing the back tires for the same car. Normally all of those things would come out of some sort of emergency savings account. We do have a small amount set aside for car repairs, but it’s something piddly like $150. In light of the fact that out of the three cars we own, there is a total of 32 years and 467,200 miles between them, we should probably have a more robust savings account for that area. (Lance, math genius he is, calculated that our cars have been around the globe a little less than 19 times at 24,902 miles each trip).

And while I knew that we were going to have to shell out money to replace my dead Nikon D200, I hadn’t settled on a model or a final amount. I bit the bullet and bought a new Nikon D3200 for $475 off of Amazon because I knew that I’d want to take lots of pictures at the State Fair in August (which incidentally Lance left my camera at home thus negating one of the main reasons for the camera purchase). 

In regards to the gifts that I really didn’t think to factor into the budget, I talked with another friend who was attending the same wedding and split some of the wedding gift costs. I tried to make smart decisions about the shower gift basket I put together (wedding night themed: utilizing a basket and champagne flutes I already had; going to Trader Joes for the gourmet foodstuffs; not getting food items that would have to be refrigerated, etc.) As a result those gifts didn’t really cost me as much as I had originally thought they might. 

On the flip side, July is actually an example of God’s provision. Lance’s employee referral bonus was finally added onto his paycheck (just two months late) and we received an FSA reimbursement check for dependent care. Not to mention that Lance has been receiving his sales bonus checks which we’ve been using to make additional loan payments but this month used to help with unplanned expenses. 

So there's our budget fails for July. Feel encouraged :) 

Gender Reveal: Girl

Congratulations it’s a girl. Wow. Shocker to say the least.

I think in every mom’s heart there is the desire for a daughter. At least if I’m being truthful with myself, I really hoped for a girl. Don’t get me wrong, I love Lucan wholeheartedly but there is something to be said about the bond of a mother and a daughter. Lucan is more than I can ever ask for but I’m quite certain he won’t be wearing gold glitter polka dot leggings. Lance and I will probably keep our family numbered at four, so I knew this was it. Ever since the start of this pregnancy, I had repeatedly told myself that I would not allow myself to be heartbroken if I ended up being the mom of all boys. God knows what he's doing and would know if I would be better suited to being a boy mom. So I left it at that.

I know that I’ve mentioned that Lance has his conviction that second children don't get as much special attention as first children, so he wasn’t content to find out the baby’s gender at the doctor’s office like normal people. When we had Lucan we had a big brunch with our families and found out with everyone at the same time. It was fun, but more work then I really wanted to put myself (or my mom) through. And after four and a half months, I just plain wanted to know. But that type of thinking was not amenable to dear husband.

When we went to the OB/GYN’s office, I was a little confused that we had our OB appointment before the ultrasound. But I figured they had a better idea of these things than I did, so I went along with it. Lo and behold, I had my OB appointment scheduled but not my ultrasound. DISAPPOINTING. So five days later, I had my OB appointment and my ultrasound. In the ultrasound technician’s office she briefly told us to close our eyes and then fifteen seconds later, she told us we could open them again. Based on that alone, Lance and I were fairly certain that this baby was a boy.

Cut to six days later. July 30, National Cheesecake Day at the Cheesecake Factory. Both of our sets of coworkers were beside themselves waiting to find out boy baby or girl baby. A couple of Lance’s coworkers convinced Lance to give them the card with the gender written on it and they would call into the Cheesecake Factory and have them bring out our cheesecake revealing the baby’s gender. Pretty cute, huh?! So as we got settled in with appetizers and such, Lance talked to our server and made sure everything was arranged. And then this happened:

Needless to say we were both left speechless. Lucan was busy stuffing himself full of chocolate flavored whipped cream while we both hugged and sat in stunned silence. There's nothing like finding out the gender to make everything being really real, really fast. Our friends and family have been so excited about the news and keep saying things like "Lucan is one of the most adorable children ever, but this baby, wow, she's going to be so cute!!" I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed by "how cute" this child is supposedly going to be.

We will be going to see this kiddo monthly until the end. After my ultrasound, the doctor said there is
a spot on my placenta they're concerned about and will be monitoring the growth of the baby to make sure this spot isn't interfering with her development. It's my prayer this pregnancy will continue smoothly and that the most exciting time will have been finding out that we're blessed with a daughter! (PS: should we start saving for a wedding, like now? Just kidding. Sort of.)