Red letter (potty) day!

Today was the first day that Carolina went to school with undies! She hasn't had anything in her diaper (minus one naptime) in over two weeks! Wakes up dry and goes in the toilet all day. She will NOT go in her diaper even if we're out and about. So, I'm going to have to know where bathrooms are along our route when we go out now. (A very good problem to have.)

The baby is growing well and smiling a lot. He's now 11lbs. We have to go out for a nightly walk sometime between 7pm and 9pm, to end 'crazy time' since that's the only way we've found to quickly end the crying/whining and get him to fall asleep for the night. The first part of the night he'll sleep 3-4 hours and then about 2 hours at a time after that. The past few nights he's started to get up at 4am, 5am and 6am. I remember this with Carolina and can't wait for it to end, but we have more months of it I'm sure.

His acid reflux is REALLY improving with the Prevacid. I'm very impressed at how well the medication works. We have the 6 week follow-up next week to see how he's healing.

Carolina is really enjoying her art and music camp program. I'm sorry for her that it ends this Friday as she is REALLY enjoying herself. Plus she comes home at about 1pm completely ready for a nap, which makes the afternoon go better, too.

In August, I think she is going to like her new school and going everyday. I wasn't sure about camp being every weekday, that maybe it was too long a day from 9.30-12.30, but it's worked out well.

Carolina's first ballet class

Yesterday, was Carolina's first ballet class. She got all dressed up in her tutu, tights and ballet slippers. The class was for girls aged 6+ but Carolina is only 3. As it was just a trial class for her, it didn't matter she was the smallest, youngest and least experienced. She followed along very well and was surprisingly graceful for her age. During the class at one point, the girls were supposed to twitter around gracefully but they were all distracted and looked so. The strict and demanding teacher said, "Girls! Do you want to look like ballerinas or monkeys?" Carolina gets a look of excitement on her face and blurts out, "A monkey! I want to be a monkey!!"

3 years old: More inches than pounds

So our tiny dancer is still a dancer so it seems. She's barely put on much weight in the past year but has grown! 3' and 26lbs. I wonder how quickly her brother will lap her in weight. At least her fever is gone. The baby has acid reflux and we started him on the medication yesterday. I think the two times I gave it to him he spit it up. So today we gave it to him BEFORE he drank milk and so when he did spit up, the medicine was already in his belly. First in, last out. Spending literally hours at a time with a fussy baby is exhausting. And Carolina gets virtually no play time eith me. It's affecting her a lot. I'm hoping this will change soon. Gotta go, not sleeping baby is up again.

I want to write an update but I'm too busy

So besides the excessive whining and crying (big sister) and gas and spit up and crankiness (little brother), we still manage to get sleep at night in 1.5-3 hour intervals. We're doing MUCH better that way than our first time around.

The most difficult part of the day is lunchtime and dinner time as the big sister has decided this is battleground time and she will give me the most passive-aggressive look and tone and WILL NOT EAT. So I have, literally, two hands full with holding a baby that can't often be put down and/or feeding him while big sister should be eating. Even if I read to her, she is really pushing my buttons with this.

It would be a lot easier if I could put the baby down but much of the day I have to hold him. He cries the moment he gets put down and very often spits up.

I don't know that we're getting any better at burping him and he has an appointment for a specialist on Monday to see if he's got reflux. I don't think so since he's put on a pound and grew 2 inches since coming home from the hospital. (He's now 9lb & 22" long.) And reflux babies often aren't gaining weight. I've totally changed my diet, which was already lacking in dairy, and it doesn't seem to make much difference.

I think we need a spa day for some relaxation :)

Okay, gotta run

Ismael is here!

Ismael Perez V born May 11, 2012 at 8.51pm weighing 8lbs and was 20" long. Here's the story: Carolina and I went to NJ so I could look at two apartments, since we are moving this summer. I hadn't had many contractions the previous two days and was resigned to being pregnant forever. That morning I went for my weekly OB exam at 8.30am and then Ismael brought Carolina to the doctor office so she and I could go to my dad's after. So as usual after these exams, I was very uncomfortable and occasionally felt contraction-like pains in the car ride. My dad brought us straight to look at the apartments. After, we went to my folks' apt for lunch. Carolina took a nap and I was too uncomfortable to lie down. So I didn't rest. Carolina woke up about 2pm and we had planned to drive home then to avoid GWB traffic. But she refused to leave Grandma's house. My dad said we could stay as long as I was ok going home after 6 since there would be after-work traffic. So we stayed. Around 4pm my parents ordered some take out for dinner. It was too early for either Carolina or I to eat dinner but I ate and during then I started to think that these pains were strong and coming at a regular intervals. After one hour they were about 8 minutes apart and lasting 30-40 seconds. I waited another 30 minutes before calling the doctor. By then they were getting closer to 6 mins apart. While on the phone with the doctor, I felt the most intense contraction and hung up. Walked out of the bathroom and told my dad we had to go to the hospital now. I called Ismael, who was gratefully not at work but still in manhattan. He started looking for a can. We left the apt around 6.30 and after some necessary-but-crazy driving we pulled up to the entrance just before 7. It took only about 10 minutes and the contractions were getting fast and furious. Gratefully Carolina wasn't with us as she would have been if I went from home because it would have worried her. By the time I was rushed upstairs, I was 6cm dilated (from nearly 3cm that morning), and by the time they rushed me into delivery room I was 7cm and trying to breathe but ended up screaming to deal with the very intense pain. The finally got the anesthesiologists to come and I could calm down. Since I ended up pushing around 8pm, I was too numb to feel much of anything but I could feel the contractions JUST enough. And within 50 minutes he was here. Unfortunately, there were too many babies born that week and no beds available for me in recovery. Also they didn't have my blood labs in my chart so I couldn't feed him until they determined I didn't have HIV nor HepB. They took him to the nursery, and everyone left to attend an emergency C section in the OR. I was alone without a way to call a nurse, except to yell, for about an hour. They finally came back and removed the epidural catheter and deal with everything I was hooked up to. I was in labor room until 3pm the following day, when a bed opened. Earlier that morning they said they could give the baby. His HepB vaccine so I could feed him since HIV was negative but still no HepB blood result. It was all very uncomfortable in the room and on a bed where it didn't go flat and I was stuck on my back. So my butt/bone hurt a lot. Still does. Recovery experience wasn't stellar either. But baby Ismael was great. We are very much adjusting to breast feeding and not sleeping at night. I really like this little guy. Carolina is totally in love with "my baby".

Week 38. Any day now, right?

At this point 3 years ago we would have had Carolina tomorrow. I went for my weekly checkup and I'm 2-3cm dilated and the baby is in position and all measurements they took with the ultrasound were good. So, I'm ready. I'm ready! Is the baby ready? Only time will tell. The doctor mentioned that it could be this weekend or next week. They estimate the baby is about 7-7.25lbs (3-3.2Kg). Already bigger than Carolina was. Here's to hoping his head isn't much bigger. I've heard the second one comes faster and easier. Not always but usually. Ok, good! Sign me up for that. Funny, we're getting ready for #2, when our first just finished getting her last tooth in and is fading out using diapers but not totally yet. So it's going to be about 6 years of my life changing diapers. I get the giggles about this. Then I think of my paternal great grandmother. 9 children, one every 3 years. Diapers and pregnancy over 27 years. Holy sweet Jesus!

Week 37 and counting

I'm pretty sure my belly dropped in this past week, specifically this past weekend. I've noticed it looking a bit lower and I can fit nearly 4 fingers between the base of my chest and top of my belly.

Not getting a lot of sleep but enough to feel pretty good most of the day. And, gratefully, Carolina is still a good napper. The past week I've been giving her melatonin and I know it has not stopped the headbanging but I think she's able to rest a little more. She seems less agitated and fights me less about laying down for naps. Her bad dreams persist. I wrote the director a letter explaining that after May, I'm not enrolling Carolina in school. I explained about the poor sleeping and other regression, and said that if it gets worse, I'll take her out earlier. It's hard since I don't really know what happens every day or even on a weekly basis. They don't do that kind of thing here. And I realize in a class of about 15, my one child is not their first priority. But she's mine and the head banging really lets me know this isn't good. God, I hope she stops again this summer. It was such a relief when it ended.

Since we're aiming to move in June or July, I believe that will leave (unfairly) the bulk of packing to my husband. I would like to start packing up non-essential things now but there's not any good place to put a pile of boxes and I think I'd get a right bollocking from just about everyone at this stage in my pregnancy if I did.

It's too bad that paying a moving company to pack up your things is so exorbitantly expensive, otherwise I would.

I've had such a craving for cakes. Cake, brownies, cupcakes. Cookies, not too much. Cake. I want cake. I tried to make a red velvet cake with icing from a recipe in a recent Saveur issue. It was a total and complete failure of both time and money. It took me an hour and a half to get to the point where the cakes were cooked and icing should have been done but the cake was tasteless and icing wouldn't firm up. I actually threw it all away. It is the first baking failure I've made so badly that it went in the garbage before anyone could do more than taste it. VERY VERY gratefully my lovely husband brought home a piece of cake from Magnolia Bakery, which made everything better, and a cupcake for the very disappointed Miss Carolina. She had been running into the kitchen every 20 minutes with this big smile asking, "Cake ready yet, Mommy?"

Plus there's no Dutch chocolate baking powder in the stores here. And asking the store staff if they have any is difficult as I don't know how to say it in Spanish, and when I do explain what I'm looking for invariably the men understand I want Baking Powder, and then say something along the lines of "If it's not here (pointing) we don't have it." So I got unsweetened chocolate bars and melted them, and put it in during the mixing, seems to work mostly as an alternative.

There are shelves and shelves of box cake mixes, but little to get you really baking. And I hate store-bought icing. I guess no one bakes much anymore. I heard that catering children's school parties can be done by McDonald's now, so why make your own food? Bah. I'm with Julia on this one. Make your own damn food!

Actually, it's because I have the time and cooking with Carolina is a lot of fun. Once this baby comes, at least the first year or so, I know I'll go back to wishing all our food was instantly made by someone else. Speaking of which, if the store wasn't so far from our apartment, I'd waddle over to the supermarket on Greenpoint Ave to get some pierogis. I'm going to miss good, inexpensive pierogi at the local supermarket when we're in New Jersey. I know where to get really good pierogi in NJ, but it's not at the local supermarket.

And, the supermarket here isn't actually far, it's about 6 blocks away. But I'm still on the no-walking-more-than-necessary promise this week to my husband. Poor guy is understaffed this week so I can't encourage the baby to arrive early. Come Saturday, however, let's go for a walk!