I hate when I wait so long to post. Now I have lots of stuff to talk about and not enough time in one sitting to get it all out. Well, the big thing this past week is we went to stay at Mom and Dad’s new “mountain house” in Maryland. They bought a second house in the city my dad is from and near where all of my extended family lives. To try to beat the hurricane last week, we decided to leave early on Thursday. We didn’t get out of town until 6pm and I thought it would be a good thing because (hehe) Emma was going to sleep at her regular bed time at 9 and would sleep the rest of the way. Uh no. Well, I did get the bed time right but she only slept until 11 when we had to stop and then stayed awake until we got there at 2am. And then, we had to unload the trailer and set up all the beds and didn’t get to sleep until 3:30-4am and she was still AWAKE. And THEN woke up at 6:30am. And THEN didn’t take a nap until 1pm on Friday. Uh yeah, we were tired. Thankfully, there was enough of us that we could take turns on Friday taking naps. She wasn’t that bad in the car. She cried several times but overall, I would say she didn’t really well for such a long drive. But man, we were all tired from entertaining her the whole time. I couldn’t tell you how many times we sang Ring around the Rosies and Miss Mary Mack.
The week went well. Scott and Dad worked their butts off on the house all week. Emma kept Mom busy. Heather and I scrapbooked when we had any break of 30 minutes or more. And the family dropped in every day to visit. It was SO nice to stay at the house with no other family and to have the family come to us instead of us staying in the car half the day. Emma actually got her normal nap all but one day. Which I was really worried about knowing from previous trips how crazy our days could be.
Emma got in a “fight” with my two cousins, 6 and 2. She actually pushed the 6 year old down and the 2 year old brother got mad so he pushed her and then Emma was pushing both of them. The 6 year old thought it was great and was laughing the whole time but the 2 year old was taking it very seriously that his brother was getting pushed. It was really cute actually. She of course got the no pushing talk when it was over. She also got to play with my 3 yo and 4 yo girl cousins. She really liked them but I don’t know how much they liked her. The 4yo tried to take Emma’s baby in the baby stroller and Emma had an absolute coniption. She sat down on the floor and balled her eyes out, yelling baby, baby. I felt really bad for her because I know she was “concerned” for baby but she really has to learn to share. She is not good at it in general and this was probably the worst episode of non-sharing yet. I know she will learn, but apparently not without some emotional scars along the way.
Emma’s vocabulary seemed to flourish while we were gone. She said gate and clothes and even said a little sentence one day. She said, “Pap, ball, get it.” And she really meant for my dad to get the ball she had just thrown. She has learned big and what it means. She will say big bubble or big plane. She knows some colors, brown, blue, green, purple, pink, red, orange. Not all the time though. She misses the mark sometimes but her favorite seems to be blue. That one is usually right. She knows two and when there are two of something. When she has two babies, she’ll say two babies. She can’t count to two, but she sure knows what two means. She has started just in the last day or two to say A and B. It seems as if when I start singing the alphabet she starts babbling some letters. She has learned what “poot” is. Which with her daddy, it is reinforced constantly (rolling eyes). Tonight was funny. Tomorrow I am giving a bridal shower for my other friend getting married and MIL told her they would go shopping tomorrow. Emma says, “mart!” Meaning, Wal-Mart. We don’t go there that often do we?? She also learned ice cream at the mountains. She said cookie today which I know is usually one of the first words babies learn, but I don’t give her a lot of them, so I guess that’s why. And she definitely knows park and knows what one looks like. Any time we pass an actual park or a church with a sliding board, it’s park! park! park! She likes the swings and sliding board the best. This week was cow. There are cows everywhere up there and she wanted to see them. Ever other second was cow! cow! cow! She is bossy as ever. Telling people when to come on and when to sit down, when to eat.
This week at the mountains we visited the coal miner’s site and the 9-11 PA crash site. I thought I would be overwhelmed like my sister was at the 9-11 site but after seeing ground zero, I don’t know, I guess nothing can compare. It was quite saddening to think that’s where people’s brother, sister, mother, father passed on. The thing I was amazed at is how close the plane came to hitting a city. It wasn’t a big city but only a mile or less away were places even more people could have gotten hurt.
One more weird thing from this week. I woke up I think Wednesday morning at about 5 and really felt like I needed to pray for someone. So I did. Then I went in and checked on Emma and I felt one side of her and then the other and couldn’t find a breath. I lifted up her arm and it fell down without any kind of resistence. Which is kind of weird for her. My stomach jumped in my throat and I started to pick her up and she moved her head from one side to the other. I still don’t know whether I was praying for someone else or it really was Emma I was praying…whether I was just feeling her at all the wrong spots and was just paranoid. I don’t know. In any case, it scared me really badly and I couldn’t quit crying when I went back to bed. Scott was awake when I went back to bed and I told him. It scared him too so we went and got Emma and she slept the rest of the morning with us.
As I mentioned, tomorrow I am helping give a bridal shower tomorrow. Last one for awhile now I hope. Since we have been out of town, I spent today getting EVERYTHING ready. I’m exhausted now. Scott is on call for work for the hurricane again. He may have to leave at 8am for the coast. He’s getting off early tonight because of that and at this point, I may as well wait up for him. I think I finished everything for the shower that I can tonight.
I guess I should slip in something about the pregnancy. I am 31 weeks now and have gained over 20 lbs. I feel like it. I get out of breath SO easily. The baby feels like she must be 5 feet tall in there when she gets moving. Scott felt it the other week and said it felt like she was moving furniture in there. That statement made me laugh but more than that, I loved that he felt so much movement. He kind of validated all this uncomfortable-ness I’ve been feeling. Mom and Heather felt it too this week and Heather couldn’t believe she was making that much movement. It’s weird when you start feeling elbows and knees and heads and butts moving when before it was a little tiny kick that seemed like a toothpick was trying to poke. We are having such a time with this baby’s name. I’m tired of fighting with everyone about her name just being Lexi instead of Alexis. Dad wants Lexi Kate and wants to call her Katie. Fine, I’ll name her Alexis Kate and you can call her Alex, Lexi, Alexis, Lexis, Kate, Katie, Ally. I don’t care. I’ve already got it ingrained that her name is Lexi and that’s what I call her without even thinking now. No, for real, though. I really am having such a hard time with it. I even broke down and bought a baby name book this week.
I found Emma a quilt for her toddler bed (which we don’t have yet). Mom and Dad are bringing my cousin’s dresser/changing table and a new white rocker back from Maryland so I can start organizing her room a little. I keep getting so scared when I think of having this baby. I am totally overwhelmed at the thought of taking care of two children. Just the thought of having the go through the whole baby stage is just, well, depressing. Babies are as cute as buttons and sweet as angels when they are little but darn, they are a lot of work. There are times every once in a while that I get really excited about it and can’t wait to have her here and then there are others like when I have to get Emma ready for bed by myself that I just don’t know how I’m going to handle it. And I for some reason seem to be avoiding the whole work situation. Besides Scott’s grandmother, we still don’t have any childcare worked out for when I go back to work. I know she is available but she already watches one boy full-time and two other smaller grandchildren on an as needed basis and I just don’t want to give the poor woman another full-time child to watch. And I really don’t want to start it again because once you start, it is hard to explain why you’re stopping. Mom was supposed to contact a customer who formerly was going to watch Emma before we moved. I haven’t heard anything on that though. I don’t know, I just feel so unprepared for this baby. And she’s coming right after both of these weddings this fall and right after (or before) Emma’s birthday and right before Christmas. Scott was already talking about me fitting in some dress for his Christmas party. Um, no. I just can’t wait until I hold her and realize that she’s one of the most precious things in this whole wide world and no matter what I have to do, I’ll make sure it all works out.