Trips to the doctor

These trips to Angelo are getting old. I love being in Angelo and seeing family, but I'm beginning to hate the drives. Well, I should say that D'Laney is beginning to hate the drives. Two hours strapped down in a seat is hard for a little one who has a hard time sitting still by herself for more than 5 minutes at a time. I forgot her little portable DVD player this trip, and it was a long, screaming fit filled drive home last night. She got a shot yesterday, so she might not have been feeling all that well, so what better night to take away her pacifier? What were we thinking?! Actually, it was the best situation, because we had forgotten to take any to Angelo over the weekend, so she had already gone 3 days without one. She screamed for a little while last night, but some rocking put her to sleep. I just laid her down for a nap, though, and you'd of thought I had done it in a room full of rabid dogs, she's screaming her head off! "Momma, paci? Momma!! Paci!!"
I had my own worst mother ever moment last week when I realized that I hadn't gotten D'Laney her 18 month immunization. That month, her well baby was a couple weeks before the required 6 month span between Hep A shots was up, so I was going to have to wait to get her shot. And then completely forgot about it. It was just one little shot, but it totally slipped my mind. I found her shot record last week and realized the mistake, so I called her doc's office and scheduled her a check up for monday so she could get that one little shot. I also wanted to talk to him about her eating habits. As in, the habit of not eating, ever. I know a lot of toddlers are like that, just too busy to eat, so I shouldn't be worried about it, but since she's always been way small for her age, I just wanted to make sure she was gaining like she should. Well, I had absolutely nothing to worry about. She weighed 23.4 lbs, which moves her up to the 15-20%, and is 34" tall, which moves her up to the 40%! At 12 months, she was in the 5% for both, and at 18 months, she was barely in the 10%, so she has really grown! Apparently she's getting plenty to eat. I knew better than to worry. Her shot went really well, too. I held her face away (and my own) and when the nurse stuck her, all she said was "Ouch!" And it wasn't even a very painful ouch, more dramatic than anything, and she didn't' shed a single tear (and I didn't either, it only took 2 years!) We also let the office know about the new baby and got registered. I got a little worried for a second because Dr. Patyrak told me that his daughter is due with his first grandchild in December as well, and he would understandably be there for the birth and would have to miss mine, but he expects his grandbaby between christmas and new years, and we'll deliver long before that, so I'm not worried, he'll be there.
My appointment went really well, too. I've only gained 2 lbs, but that's normal, I think. Everything was so messed up with D'Laney that I'm not sure what normal weight gain should be, but she didn't say anything about it, so I'm assuming it's fine. The baby is big and healthy and only measuring a couple days bigger than the gestational age, so my due date will remain the 23rd of Dec. When we have the 4D sono at 7 months, they'll be able to tell if the baby is really big and if we'll deliver more than a week early. As of right now, we're looking at around the 14th-16th for D-day. That will give me a couple weeks to recover before christmas. I don't think Christmas will be that bad, though. The toughest part will just be the driving, and if we can time the feedings right, those shouldn't be too bad. Cameron had to work yesterday and my mom had some sort of virus with fever all last week and has been keeping her distance, so my sister took off a morning of work and went with me to help wrangle D'Laney. She's starting radiology school in January, so she really enjoyed the sonogram. I think D'Laney did too, she kept saying "I see!" but we were constantly asking, "Do you see the baby? Do you see your......SISTER?!"
It's a girl! I would like to say that I was totally shocked, but I wasn't. I knew, I just didn't want to admit it. I won't say that I wasn't disappointed, but I wasn't as much as I expected to be. The little girl we already have is so sweet and funny and precious, why mess with a good thing?
So now we get to figure out a name and I can start planning a nursery. I'm excited that I can make the baby's room and D'Laney's room match. That'll be fun and easy. The name game, though, is not going to be as easy, I'm afraid. Although, when I told Cameron my official suggestion last night, he just sighed and said "No apostrophes anywhere, right?" Maybe he's coming around. He certainly didn't have to come around to the idea of having another girl. He is so excited, though he won't admit it. He's excited that she's healthy and growing, but he still maintains that he doesn't care what the gender is. I can see right through him, though. Last night his dad called for something, and when they hung up, I asked him why he didn't tell him about the girl, and he said that he had already called him. I asked who all he had called, and he said, oh, just Mom and Dad and Jason and Amy (his brother and sister.) Well, and Seth and Shane, David, Pete.... He listed off like 10 or 15 people! And when D'Laney was going to bed last night she was giving him a big hug, and he said, I love my girls, all three of them! He can say what he wants, that daddy is excited about another little girl! And I am, too. I might always long for a little boy (still don't want to think about whether or not I'm going to push for a third child) but it'll be fun to have two little girls running around, and they'll be just over two years apart, so hopefully they'll be very close.
PS: D'Laney screamed for 30 minutes solid, so I just got her out and let her lay down on the couch to watch Wella (Cinderella) I'm so weak! But no paci!

So frustrating!

Potty training is still not going well. All week I have let D'Laney run around buck naked and made her sit on her potty pretty much all day long. Nothing!! I'm pumping juice into that kid like crazy, and still nothing. She's not going in the floor or anything, she's just not going. She'll hold it in until she has a diaper on and then go immediately. The only time I've put diapers on her is if we're leaving the house or she's going to sleep. I had no idea an almost 2 year old's bladder could hold so much! I did a little experiment yesterday and put a pair of big girl panties on her and sure enough, she wet them within minutes. I guess it's something about the security of having something on. I'm wondering if she's really ready for this. She'll tell us after she has gone potty or sometimes while she's actually going, but never before. I think that's kind of key, isn't it? She doesn't recognize the feeling of having to go yet, and doesn't see the correlation of sitting on the potty and actually using it. I think once she does actually use the potty, it's only going to take one or two times and she'll get it and we'll be done. It's just that I'm not a very patient person right now, and this takes a lot of patience. Oh well, December was the deadline I set, right? Surely she'll be done by then.

She did look so grown up in the 47.5 seconds she had those big girl panties on! It's a good thing I have another baby coming, because I'm not handling D'Laney not being a baby anymore very well. I'll completely lose it when my last one gets to this stage!

And I wanted to post this little video. It's kind of dark and I was moving the camera around a lot, so it's not very good. But Cameron made PB&Js for he and D'Laney, then sat at her little table with her to eat them. She just had to sit on the floor like Daddy, though. You think your kids don't watch every single move you make? D'Laney got some PB on her hand, and when Cameron told her to lick it off, she wiped it on her shorts, like she sees Daddy do with everything. Such a monkey-see monkey-do!

Cameron is such a good Daddy. How'd I get so lucky?

PS: 4 more days!!!

Update

Well, potty training didn't go so hot. D'Laney would sit there for a long time as long as I was sitting beside her, reading books, singing, and talking to me. I didn't want her to sit there for hours so the plan was to sit in 15 minute increments. 4 different times we'd sit there, nothing would happen, the 15 minutes would be up so I'd put a pull up on her and she'd wet it within seconds! I mean, literally seconds. We haven't spent much time at home today so I didn't stick to a schedule, she's sat a couple of times with no results. I'm not sure I like what we tried, so I'm going to read up on different techniques and see if there's a better way. I'm not really in a huge hurry, it's just yesterday was a complete waste of a day and I can't stand that. I haven't tried the completely naked all day technique yet, I think I'll try it tomorrow. I'm not sure if she knows to tell me that she's about to go, but I guess that's part of learning. I'll probably be wishing our whole house was linoleum by this time tomorrow! I also think I should move her potty into the bathroom. I had it in the living room because I felt bad, if I was going to make her sit still for most of the day, she should at least be able to watch her favorite movies. Well, she didn't even pay attention to the TV and was just interested in her books, and she can read those in the actual bathroom. So we'll see how the next few days go. Wish us luck!

This is how we started the day, everything nice and neat with her potty and wipes and a organized tub full of books. I didn't get the picture of how we ended the day, but it was nothing like this!

We got these flash cards a while back. They have animals and things around the house on them, and are cut up into two puzzle pieces. They're really neat, but D'Laney is a little young to use them how they were intended. I had the box of them hidden under her books (why I didn't put them up in her closet, I'm not sure.) and when I got all of her books into the living room, they were exposed. She opened the box and scattered them all across her play room. Twice. This was right after I had picked them all up the first time, including finding all the matching pieces, and put the box on the table, which I thought was out of her reach. Wrong, and her smug little, What? face was pretty cute. As I took the picture she was walking off very non-chalant and left them for me to pick up again. Needless to say, they are now on a very high shelf in her closet.

No-plans weekend!

We haven't had a weekend with nothing to do in months, it seems. I'm trying to fight through some pretty bad nausea (not really from the baby, more from allergies) and get the house really clean so that there's no housework to do and we can just relax for a couple days. We're actually going to get to go to church here in Midland this sunday for the first time in I don't know how long. We've either been at my parents or Cam's for the last several weekends, those people probably think we've fallen off the face of the earth. I think we're going to really concentrate on potty training the next couple days, so it might end up being a stressful weekend, but at least we'll be home!

I haven't done a flashback friday in ages. This picture is from the 4th of July last year at the Cauley reunion. It's amazing to me how much D'Laney has changed.

I'm lazy.

I've never denied it. This word more than any other has been used to describe me since I was a little girl. My laziness even made it into our valedictorian's graduation speech, and I was actually a little flattered. I've had the time to blog lately, and there's plenty to blog about, but by the time I get my housework done and D'Laney occupied long enough for a few minutes to sit down, I just want to sit on the couch and watch DVRed episodes of Bones and Army Wives. I have taken absolutely no pictures of my child in I don't know how long. At camp, I didn't get either camera out of the bag I packed them in. Thank goodness other people took some pictures of her that I don't mind stealing. Right now D'Laney is asleep and all the dishes are done (that seems to be my neverending chore, how I hate not having a dishwasher!) so I'm going to attempt to blog. I guess I'll just go chronologically starting with camp.

• Camp was hot. That's about all I can say about it. When I was pregnant with D'Laney, I only went for the weekends and didn't stay all week, but this time I thought, well, I'm not getting sick anymore and I'm not near as far along as I was last time, I can handle it! I've never done very well in the heat, even when I was in really good shape running CC in late summer, but we were going to be staying in an air conditioned camper and I decided to only go to one bible class and two services a day. I could handle that. Well, I handled it pretty well until about Thursday, and then I started feeling really really bad. I wasn't getting nauseous and sick again, thank goodness, I just felt like you do when you get too hot, only when I cooled off, I still felt that way. However, it was a great camp. D'Laney loved her bible class. I think there were 14 little ones in her class, all under the age of 2! All but a couple were kids of people that grew up going to that camp and will continue to do so until they die, so we can expect all these little ones to be coming year after year. That's encouraging, because the numbers are going down little by little every year, but here's a lot of campers in training! Our preacher this year was Michael Light from Bangs, and he is so good if you can keep up with him. That man talks 90 to nothing and spouts scripture so fast you have to be on your toes if you want to keep notes, which I didn't even attempt. We had something like 20 baptisms and several restorations. Our niece Loren was baptized, and asked her dad, Cameron's brother Jason, to do it. We are so proud of her. Last year our nephew Ryder was baptized about 3 hours after we left for the week so we missed it. I'm so glad we were able to be there for this one. A stomach bug tore through camp the last night and half the camp caught it, but thankfully we didn't. By then we were pretty much hiding out in the camper most of the time avoiding any heat at all.


• We got home from camp on sunday and got right back in the car tuesday to head to angelo for a OB appt. Everything looks really good, I actually lost 6 lbs, but I expected that. Camp was so hot that I couldn't really eat much, but I did a lot of walking, which is good. I didn't say anything about the heat to Doc, I didn't want to get scolded for going, I just told her that since I was feeling better I was able to do some walking, which is the truth. She wanted to see me again in three weeks instead of four. The heartbeat was very strong this time, probably because the kid's already the size of a 3 month old! Cameron had to work so my mom met me at the doc's office and watched D'Laney for me, then took her home with her! I was able to get all my laundry from camp done and catch up on the hours and hours of sleep that I lost.


• Cameron and I went on a date while we were childless. We saw Public Enemies, and we both loved it. The '30s and '40s are my favorite era and I love movies set in that time. Plus, Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, brief appearances by Billy Crudup and Channing Tatum, um, yeah, I liked the movie!


• Cameron got off around lunch on thursday and was off friday, so we headed to angelo for the holiday weekend. Cameron's family was also in angelo for the weekend, staying at his uncle's lake house at Ivie. We stayed with my parents, but Cameron went fishing with his dad friday morning, then both his fam and mine all met at Zentner's Daughter for supper friday night. After supper we took all the kids to the river stage for the Pop's concert. In my 25 years in angelo I had never been. I knew there'd be a lot of people there, but my goodness! I bet there were more than the 10,000 expected. The symphony was really good, I was a little surprised, and the fireworks were great. D'Laney was pretty ambivalent about them, they didn't scare her, but they didn't excite her either. She actually fell asleep with about 5 minutes left. Saturday we hung out at my parents then went out to the lake house for hamburgers and of course some 42. Sunday was the annual Cauley 4th of July Reunion. My grandmother was keeping count and she counted close to 70 of us now. Not everyone was there, but most of us. It's been 8 years since Grandmother Cauley died, I sure wish she could be there to see all of us.


• So far this week has been pretty lazy. My air conditioner has been acting up for a few weeks now and I finally took it in. One little switch had to be replaced, total for parts and labor was less than $100! I was beyond excited, the absolute last thing we needed right now was to spend several hundred dollars, if not more, to get it fixed, but I wasn't about to finish out the summer with out an air conditioner in my car.


• We haven't had any hits on the house. We've had a couple of people look at it, and both really liked it, but aren't interested right now, I guess. I'm having a hard time being patient. I have to keep reminding myself that it's only been on the market a month, and the last time we sold a house, the results were not typical (on the market less than 2 weeks, got more than we asked!) It's frustrating because we can't do anything until it sells, including making a final decision on exactly what it is we're going to do. I'm not worried, just impatient.


• D'Laney. Oh, D'Laney. That kid is so funny. And she knows it, she's such a ham. Her vocabulary has expanded by like 10000%. She's stringing a few sentences together, we still only understand a couple words of them, but she's starting to uses phrases she hears a lot, like "let go!" and "did you see that ___?" At the mechanic's shop yesterday she and I were waiting for Cameron to pick us up and the owner gave her a little sucker. She would take a lick, hold it out for me to take a lick, then cock her head to the side and say "good?" I'd of course say it was and then we'd start all over. She likes to dress herself and put her own shoes on, and prefers to wear dresses. She loves being outside and has learned the fun of driving. Because we're on private dirt roads so often, she gets to drive a lot, and she actually steers and makes turns and everything. We've slowly begun potty training, but no results yet. She has sat on her little potty several times, but hasn't actually used it yet. This morning she sat there for like 10 minutes talking to me and reading a book, got up, walked into my room and proceeded to pee on my floor. I know she's still pretty young for it, but she's the one who's been pushing it. I'm letting her really dictate how we go about it until I decide how I want to do things. I think once she uses her little potty a couple of times, it'll just take a matter of days, but if it takes longer that's fine. Just so long as she's good and trained by december!


• December seems so far away, doesn't it? Today I hit 16 weeks, I think, so I'm almost halfway there! Our next appt. is July 20th, and we'll nail down a due date then. We'll also find out what we're having!!!! I really really hoped she'd do a sono at our last visit, but she didn't. I'll be a couple days shy of 18 weeks then and she said the baby will be plenty big enough (as she looked at my huge belly and smiled) and if cooperating, we'll get a good shot. D'Laney did a little toe touch for us, so hopefully, this one will too. I've been feeling really good aside from the exhaustion, which I don't expect to go away for several years. I haven't been nauseous in several weeks, and my appetite is back in full force. I'm still having alot of ligament pain, but it goes away pretty quickly. I'm in pretty much a bad mood all the time. Not angry or yelling, just irratated and bored, really. It's a very strange feeling. I'm not used to not being happy all the time. That's not the right word, I'm very happy right now, probably more so than at any time in my life, just not chipper, I guess. Maybe it's because I'm so tired all the time. I hope it's hormones and it'll pass as soon as the baby is born. My belly gets bigger every day, and I know some of you want a belly shot, so by the time I finish this post, I'll decide if I want to take one and put it on here. But it sure won't be a bare belly, one 9 lb baby and another that's looking to be bigger make things ugly under this tshirt. I'm carrying much different than I did the first time. I'm still pretty much out in front, but with D'Laney, I stayed fairly thin and just had a basketball for a belly. This time I'm getting thicker around my entire midsection. I haven't gotten any bigger in my butt and thighs, but all the way around from my sides to my back have gotten pretty thick. I'm hoping it means that the weight will be a little more evenly distributed and I won't have as much back pain from having to adjust my posture. Of course my chest continues to grow. I told Cameron that if breast size is any indication of milk production (which I know it's not) this is going to be a very fat baby! My face is a little heavier too, that's the worst part. I'm feeling a whole lot of movement, usually in the evenings. It's still mostly flutters, but I have felt one or two sweeping feet or fists. I was telling Cameron last night that this kid moves WAY more than D'Laney did, and he shot me a weird look. He said that I obviously had forgotten how much she moved because it was quite literally non-stop. We'd sit on the couch and watch my belly lump and jump for hours, and on more than one occasion Cameron would grunt and scoot way from me in our little bed because she wouldn't quit kicking him in the back. And she sure hasn't slowed down since, so I'm soooo excited this one's a mover and shaker as well (does sarcasm translate very well when you read it?!) D'Laney is still pretty oblivious to the baby, she can't understand why she can't crawl all over me and sit on my tummy like she used to. She will pat my tummy and say baby, but I know she doesn't get it. But that might not be such a bad thing, maybe she's young enough to adapt when the baby arrives and forget what it was like before. I'm sure her daddy and I will sure remember, but maybe she won't. We've been discussing names and are completely stumped on a girls name. Our first son has been named pretty much since we started dating, but if this baby is a girl I'm afraid she'll never have a name. I would like her name to start with a "B", any suggestions? Any that I like Cameron hates, but he hasn't made any suggestions of his own.

I guess that's it. I almost wrote a novel, didn't I? See that's what happens, I go so long without blogging, then don't know where to stop. If I'd just do this more often, I'd write less. I'm going to steal a few pictures from camp and post them later, and I guess I'll go take a belly picture and post it right now. I hate pictures of myself, really really really hate pictures of myself. However, I do love the way I look pregnant. It's when I feel most at home in my own skin, when I look the most like myself. I'm just wearing a tshirt today, so it's not the most flattering, but you'll get the idea of how enormously huge I am for having so far to go.

See? Huge! Don't forget to leave your "B" girl suggestions! We need help!

so much to catch up on...

I have no idea why I've been in such a blogging slump. I sit down to post and just simply do not want to take the time. We've had a lot going on, a lot, but I just haven't taken the time to write about it. But D'Laney and Cameron are both gone, and my house is spotless (a rarity, but I'll explain later) so I have no excuse. I'm going to bullet though, because that seems to be the fastest way and I don't feel like trying to make paragraphs make sense.

• Let's see, where do I start? It's been so long... I'll start with a baby update. We had an appointment on the 1st. Everything looked good, except that the doc couldn't find a heartbeat. I know a couple that lost a baby a few weeks ago at 12 weeks, which is really late, so I was kinda freaking out a little bit. She sent me over to the sono lady and she found the baby without a problem. It was just sitting so far towards my back that the doc couldn't get to it. We got to see his/her little face and arms and legs just a-flailing. It looks like we have another active kiddo. Cher (the sono gal) kept going back to one shot over and over and I was getting a little worried, then she said, "how far are you?" I told her 10 1/2 weeks, and she said that the baby is measuring 11 1/2 weeks. Because we aren't sure when this blessed event happened, we don't know if our dates are off or if I'm just carrying another large baby. (By the size of my huge belly, I'm going to go with big baby!) The doc didn't want to change my due date, so we're sticking with the 23rd of Dec, but if the baby is that big, maybe we'll deliver even sooner than the 7-10 days early like we're talking about right now. So as of yesterday, I am either 13 or 14 weeks, which means that at our next appointment on the 30th, I could be 16 weeks and we might be able to tell whether we've got a little boy or girl on the way. I'm not holding my breath though, Doc didn't say anything about it. We'll see, I'm so so so anxious to know. Even more so than I was with D'Laney. I've been morning sickness free for over a week now, so hopefully that has passed. I'm still worn out by the time that 8 or 9 rolls around, but I'm just going to have to get used to that. I've never been much of a night owl anyway. My stomach still hurts quite a bit, but I think they baby is having a growth spurt right now, so maybe that will lessen soon, too. I did feel the baby move for the last two nights. Both times I was just laying on the couch really still and I knew exactly what it was, no guessing the second time around!
• Cameron has been out of town for the last couple weeks, and was supposed to be gone until the end of the month, but my baby is so good at his job, they are way ahead of schedule and he's coming home this weekend!! Just in time for camp!!
• CAMP!! Actually, I don't know why I'm so excited about it. Don't get me wrong, I love camp, but in just a couple days in the heat the last couple weeks and I thought that I was going to pass out, so I think camp is going to be pretty rough on me. I am super excited about where we'll be staying. A good friend of cameron's bought a travel trailer a couple years ago that he lived in until just recently. This thing is almost as big and is way nicer than our first house. Matt hasn't sold it yet, and so we just called him up and asked if we could borrow it for the week. Of course he said yes, but it'll also be good exposure for the camper, he's wanting to sell it now and maybe someone from camp will want to buy it.
• Mom came to pick up D'Laney on tuesday for the rest of the week. My parents love having her stay with them now that they're both out for the summer. It also gives me an opportunity to get packed and ready for camp without distractions or "helping" hands. It's also letting me rest up for a few days before camp. Camp really takes a lot out of you, and when you don't really have a whole lot of energy to spend, it's rough. I miss the little bug, though. Lucas, mom, cadye, and d'laney are bringing the trailer from angelo saturday and I'll just meet them at the camp grounds. I'm anxious to see her, mom said when she gets tired, she walks around the house looking for me saying, Amy?! Yes, she's still calling me Amy, and yes, I still don't like it!
• I told y'all a while back that we were putting our house on the market. We got it listed a couple weeks ago and tuesday we had our first prospective buyer look at it. He really liked it and wants to look at it again this weekend!! He's about to get married and he and his fiance both love older houses. The realtor said he wants to live in Stanton and is not interested in looking at any other houses here, so she's taking that as a good sign!! I've been keeping the house show ready, which is a lot easier when d'laney isn't here. We're praying for good news this weekend.
• The college world series is going on right now. I do love me some college baseball, and my longhorns are in great position to take it all!! I'll definitely be sneaking off from camp to catch the championship games at my in-laws. Hook 'em!!!!

I think that's it. I haven't' taken many pictures lately, but I'll look through them and if I find any new ones, I might post them tomorrow. I'll try to take a lot at camp, but don't count on it. Hope y'all all have a great weekend and a good week. Of course, I'll be seeing most of you!

Stuff for sale

I promise a real blog at some point this week!

We've decided to sell all of the baby equipment we have for D'Laney. We never used the high chair because we have a small one that straps to a chair. We'll need a double stroller for both an infant and a toddler, so this one would be obsolete. And I'm a little OCD and like things that match, so not only do I think an entire matching set would sell better, but I want whatever we get for the new baby to match and not be hodge podge just because he/she's the second kiddo. This is the flyer I made to put up at the post office and grocery store, and I've also posted pictures on my facebook page if you want a better look.

If you know anyone that would be interested, let me know. We're asking $350 for the whole set, which I think is a good deal, but we might be willing to negotiate.