a more upbeat post

A scattered brain = a scattered post.... you've been warned.

• It's Friday!! I don't love fridays as much as I used to (football season doesn't start for another month) but fridays do mean that I get Cameron home for 2 days. I have ulterior motives for being excited that he's home, it means that I get a little bit of a break from the monkey. I love spending time with my husband, don't get me wrong, but it's a welcome break. He's actually going to be home by lunch today, they shut everything down and gave everyone the rest of the weekend off after the wreck.
• Wednesday we hit 19 weeks, which is the half way point for me! I doubt I'll go much farther than 38 weeks, so we're half way done. It seems like I've been pregnant forever already, but hopefully the last half will go much faster than the first. I'm feeling her move a lot, and actually felt her with my hand a couple nights ago. Cameron tried to feel, but she was done. He didn't mind, feeling the babies move really freaks him out. He could watch D'Laney move towards the end of her pregnancy, but he didn't like feeling it. I've had a little more energy the last few days (the fact that Cam has been rained out and home so that I could nap is probably why!) but my appetite is way down. Some days I can't eat much at all, and other days, I can't get enough, though those days are few and far between. I worry a little bit about the baby not getting all the good stuff she needs, but she's growing fine, so I'm not going to worry too much. When I was pregnant with D'Laney, I didn't worry about anything at all, never once did I think anything was wrong or that I wasn't doing something right, but I'm paranoid all the time with this one. I guess because everything has been so different this time around. It's probably because we've got so much other stressful things going on besides the pregnancy that we weren't worried about last time. I'll just feel a lot better when she's here, for a lot of reasons.
• I'm a weak mother. I gave in. D'Laney now has her paci back, but only when she's going to sleep. That's really the only time she's ever had it. I just could not go any further without getting any sleep. My health was suffering, I couldn't take it anymore. And she has slept like a champ for 3 nights in a row now (and so have I, probably why I'm feeling so much better) and taken around a 3 hour nap everyday. I really thought it would just take a couple days and she'd be fine, but it had been over 2 weeks and she was still screaming for hours and not sleeping at all! We tried everything from letting her scream, rocking her for hours, giving her a new lamb that was just for sleepytime, letting her sleep on the floor, everything! We did draw the line at letting her sleep with us, that's a rule that I'm proud to say we have stuck to for 2 years now, we're not going to break it now. I know that at some point she'll be ready to let it go, maybe when the baby gets here and she sees that only babies take a paci, and she's a big girl, so she doesn't need one. Hopefully it's before then, but I'm okay with it if it's not.
• We're going to dive back into potty training now, and this time I'm going to be much more diligent. My pediatrician recommended a book to help, but it involves a doll that wets on a potty, and I don't like that, so I'm just going to keep doing like I did before, just more aggressively.
• I just about have the girls' bedroom figured out. I went to several fabric stores and found a couple patterns that I really like. I've made a list of all the things that I want in their room and how I'd like it arranged. I'm pretty excited about it, I think it'll turn out really cute. I've been thinking about the rest of the rooms in that house and how I'll decorate them. I've really been trying to keep my mind busy!
• Still no lookers for the house. I did see a car pull up yesterday in front of the sign so maybe they were writing the agents number down and they'll call. I'm beginning to stress a little about it.
• Still no name yet, either. I'm beginning to stress a lot about that. I feel terrible that this little girl doesn't have a name! Cameron doesn't feel a rush since she won't be here for a few more months, but I feel such an urgency. I think it's because I don't feel much of an attachment to this baby yet. I can feel her move and I know she's coming, but most of my thoughts are still on D'Laney. And I know that'll change, I'm not worried about "how am I going to love another one as much," it's just that right now, this baby is still sort of abstract to me, and I think that having a name for her will help. I feel guilty that I'm not as obsessive about her arrival as I was for D'Laney's, but, like I said, we have so much more going on right now. And we do have a pretty good ways to go. But I'm going to sit Cameron down this weekend, tell him why it's so important to me to find a name for her, and not let him out of the house until it's settled (and he agrees to my name! J/K, sort of.) It's supposed to keep raining all weekend, so what else is he going to do?
• Thank the Lord for all the rain! It has rained at least a little every day this week since tuesday, and is supposed to continue through the weekend.
• Cameron thinks the cloth diapering idea is crazy. I knew he would, but he doesn't know much about how far it has come in the last few years. He thinks that we'll get all this stuff, and after a couple weeks, I'll get sick of it and go back to disposables. And he might be right, so if I decide to do it at all, I might just buy a few diapers and try it for a week or two, and then decide. My friend Lauri said that she's going to do cloth when her little boy gets here in a couple months, so I might call her after he gets here and see if she likes it and how the process really works. I can read about it until my eyes fall out, I'm way more mechanical and have to actually see the process in action.
• My computer is giving me fits! It randomly closes all the windows I have pulled up without warning. Ugh!
• My cell phone has had a completely blank screen for a week now. I can still call in and out, but I can't see who's calling or call anyone that I don't know the # for, and I have no way of knowing if I've missed any calls. And forget about texting. I went to the Verizon Wireless store (who bought out Alltel, which I didn't know about) and they said that my phone was too old to really do anything about that, and since I'm eligible for an upgrade, I might as well get a new phone. I could get one of the cheapy phones for free, but I'm thinking about getting a blackberry or another "smart" phone. Any suggestions?
• Generic brand Cheerios taste nothing like the real thing. (today's a day where I can't get enough to eat) I'll have to add that to the list of things that I won't scrimp on.

I warned you that this post would be scattered.

Finally, for today's Flashback Friday, here's a family pic from long long ago. This was in '91 or '92, I can't remember, Dad's team had just won district. We have another picture just like this from my senior year where I'm cheering, Dad's coaching, and Lucas is playing, and we had just won bi-district, but I'm sure it's still in a box somewhere at my parents new house. I thought that I had it and was going to do a then and now, well not really now, but more recent. Oh well, here it is. D'Laney looks so much like my brother in this pic.