Chilly Days

 We've been enjoying some of our coldest walks to school over the past few days. It's been in the thirties, supposedly, but whew! it felt a bit cooler. The kids were ok - hats, gloves, scarves, stroller sleeping bag, etc. resulted in toasty little hands and toes. Though there were some chilly cheeks and noses on occasion. For my part, I suffered icy cold cheeks on all fronts - a problem reduced by pulling out some tights and warmer pants. Low rise pants coupled with normal shirts and coat appears to leave my bump a bit exposed at the bottom. I'm not terribly big, but just enough to get a cool breeze up my shirt whenever I go outside. I'm really glad the forecast for tomorrow is sixty degrees - my coat decided to stop zipping today.

Penny seems to run the same way as her Daddy - absolutely loves the snow. She was quite disappointed to have missed playing outside in our first few snow storms. When we got an additional inch a day or two ago, she took full advantage, making a series of angels on the front porch. They melted away by the time school was out, but here they are captured online.

On the way home from picture day last week, she was showing me her latest super jump. She thoroughly enjoys leaping from every sidewalk crack as we travel to and from school. Not sure exactly what happened, but I suddenly saw her prostrate in front of me and she turned and needed a cuddle. The cold made it hurt even worse, I'm quite sure. The scraped knee, torn pants, scraped nose and scraped forehead were a thorough job. The question is, of all the things she could have inherited from me, why did it have to be the accident prone nature? Hmmm... Normally around here, no one even looks at you, let alone talks to you. These days, random strangers everywhere we go stop me to ask what happened to her nose. Perhaps it's that cute friendly nature that makes her injury more noticeable.

A Family of Clever Little Dots

 The other night, I brought Paul down in a new set of stripy pajamas. It's a little tight fitting, with equal witdth horizontal navy and white stripes. Dan commented, "That's not a very flattering outfit, is it?" Paul immediately grabbed his sleeve and looked at it somewhat disappointed. Dan laughed, "Oh, he looks hurt: like he understood what I was saying or something."

I put Paul down on the floor and asked him, "Would you like me to read you a story." Blank stare in return. "Go get a book and I'll read it to you." Paul toddled over to the corner with all the board books, flipped through the pile until he found "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" and then carried it triumphantly back to me on the couch. I lifted him up, he spun himself so he was sitting and fluffed up the couch a little, then he handed me the book again so I could read it. "He may not say anything yet, but he does understand what we say, Daddy."

Paul is such a funny little character. Every two hours, he is ravenous, at which point he is just a clingy sobbing leech, which isn't a whole lot of fun. Now that I've figured out the problem at least, it is a problem easily rectified with ample supplies of snacking choices. But in those two hours when he is sated, he has quite an array of interesting behavior. He's very into being a "big kid." He likes to comb his own hair, sit on chairs like big kids do. He even gives himself a little time out on the stairs occasionally because it's something he sees his big sister do quite a lot. He's always very proud of himself when he does something he thinks big kids do. He's pretty good at imaginary play on his own as well. He'll go to the cabinet, remove my stew pot and carry it over to the to the toy shelf. He'll toss some play veggies into the pot and then begin stirring with the spoon (pictured in his non-comb hand). Sometimes he'll even come around to each person in the room and serve them a few veggies from the stew he's made. I can't wait to hear him start talking. He's got a lot going on in that cute little brain of his and I can't help but wonder where he'll take us with his imagination.

The Neglected Passenger

The other person who seems to have been overlooked over the past few months is our lovely little passenger. Perhaps she (January is a "she" month) hasn't been making enough of a stink to get her own entries! The biggest challenge she has posed has been getting to the midwife, and even that isn't too terrible. I'm going to the same folks in Brooklyn, but now we're a one-car household so that trip gets to be a little more fun by public transit. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there's a bus two blocks from our house that goes straight to the sonographer in Brooklyn. To get to the midwife is just a quick hop on the subway from that same bus line. It takes 90 minutes to the midwife, but that's just because the bus hits every light on Hylan Blvd, making the ride there an hour or so before I even hit Brooklyn. Once they get the promised green light coordination on the bus, surely that will cut down the ride time. 

The length of the ride makes it a little tough to have an appointment and get Penny to school on time. She's half-day in the afternoon, so I have to figure out how to swing all this, get her to eat lunch and get her to the school door by 12:50pm, all without a car. A quick, timely appointment at 9am at the sonographer works, but the midwife only does afternoons and I'm not keen on spending rush hour on the bus (hate to think how long that ride would end up being). Mom has conquered her fear of driving to our house to help out - she's willing to come as long as she can leave her house after rush hour and return home before dark. She can then drive Penny to school (because she can't walk the half mile to the school). Of course, all bets are off if it's raining or snowing. We've been lucky so far. Thankfully, pre-K also has some bonus days off, so I'm hoping to schedule some of my appointments on those if possible. I'm not looking forward to the last couple of months where they're likely to send me for weekly monitoring in addition to the usual midwife appointments. I don't want to have Penny missing a ton of school just because I have to sit hooked up to some silly monitors for 20minutes while I take a nap. 

I went for my 20 week sonogram this week and everything checks out ok. Our lovely little dear spent the entire exam with her foot on her forehead, which made the sonographer's job extra challenging. The sonographer joked that the baby might have a future in gymnastics. I had to shift my position a bit and poke her quite a lot to finally convince her to straighten out so we could get a picture of her spine more clearly. She eventually cooperated, so I don't have to go back for another round of sonograms for some time. Yay! The ride may be simple, but the scheduling where I have to take Penny's, Mom's and Dan's schedules into account just to ensure I can make it and Penny doesn't miss school is a bit of a headache. 

Big Birthday

I've been blogging so infrequently that it seems I've forgotten some folks entirely! On January 4 we celebrated two big milestones - Dan's 35th birthday and the halfway mark for the passenger's journey. Dan switched back to daytime shifts in the new year, but he managed to be the guy on call New Year's Day, so we still managed to miss some festivities there. I'm proud to say I was asleep for the actual moment 2013 arrived because I had been running sleep deprived for a few weeks and decided to halt that trend.

I remembered all too late that this was a big milestone birthday for Dr. Dan. Back when we were dating, he had claimed he had no plan to live past 35. His cholesterol was frightening, there were a series of bad health things in his family, he was generally pessimistic about his longevity. I told him I planned to keep him around significantly longer than that. When we got married, I made efforts to explore low-cholesterol foods, introduce him to vegetables (though often disguised in meat), etc. Medical school and residency definitely make my job tougher, but he's making some efforts on his own these days as well.

I feel like his birthday should have resembled an over the hill party with all kinds of dark humor, but didn't manage to pull anything together. Instead, I slow cooked a pork roast so it was ready when he got home from work. I got the kids in their jammies and we headed to Mom's and slept over at her house. Late the next morning, we didn't feel motivated enough to go look at minivans, so we left the kids for naptime with Nanna and went to watch the Hobbit. It was the first movie I've seen in a ludicrously long time. Almost worth the NYC prices! Perhaps the anti-climactic feel of the day is the most appropriate way to celebrate after all.

Penny was really excited about making his birthday special, though. She grabbed the Lego catalog and chose some items she thought he'd like best. She definitely wanted to give him "Something with little pieces that he can play when Paul is asleep." She wrapped up the Legos with care and hid them in the living room for the big day. She was all over making him a nice chocolate cake. There was some debate about whether it should have pink icing, but I eventually convinced her that chocolate mousse icing would be lovely as well. There were some lovely chocolate faces as I was spreading the "icing" on the cake. 

Christmas was a crazy whirlwind this year. Penny's old enough to finally get quite a lot out of it, so we did play it up a bit more than in the past.

Santa
Her homework one night was to write a letter to Santa. It was awesome! She told him how much she liked playing in snow, the presents, etc. Wished him a safe ride (ok, that was prompted a bit). She didn't ask him for one thing. He's just a nice guy to talk to, apparently. Her class had a special breakfast with Santa and we got her first pic of her on Santa's lap. Santa didn't know whay to do with her when she didn't start demanding things, so he tried to ask her what she wanted. She got all shy and agreed to one of his suggestions. On the last day of school before break, she told her teachers what she wanted for Christmas. Thankfully, we had already discussed a list a bit earlier in the month.

In one of our many afternoon field trips to buy Dan some sleep for his night shift in the ICU, we swung by Home Depot and ran into Santa again. We waved politely and went about our shopping. When we were about to leave, though, she insisted we couldn't leave without seeing Santa again. When we got there, she asked me for my camera so she could take a picture of me on Santa's lap. I declined the opportunity as politely as possible and we headed briskly to the door.

Paul was not so impressed with Santa. He approached cautiously a few times, but never got near enough to touch Santa on his own. Eventually, I lifted him up for a picture with Santa at Penny's breakfast thing, but he looked distracted more than anything else. Better than bawling his eyes out, I guess. Paul seemed to enjoy his present from Santa under the tree on Christmas morning - bowls for feeding himself. They make fun noises and stack!

Presents
On Christmas morning, we had company from our sleepover and no Daddy, so we just opened stockings, presents from Santa, and presents from people at the sleepover. There were some quality items, but I did get an "Are there any more presents for me?" from a certain little someone. Christmas evening we went to Nanna's and enjoyed a lovely Indian-style feast with tikka masala, lamb, kebab and naan. There were, of course, more presents (though more clothes than toys). Apparently, still not particularly satisfying.

I saved the majority of presents for Saturday. Dan's holiday night shift in the ICU was finished and he'd had a chance to sleep by the time the kids and I got home from our play date with Christopher. Unfortunately, we gave Dan so much sleep, that it was Paul's bedtime when we arrived and he just couldn't be bothered to open presents before bed. Penny was thrilled with everything she got - pink, some princess action, some Hello Kitty, some new (to her) books. I'm not sure who's more excited about the many cars they each received. Penny has organized several demolition derby style races across the kitchen floor. Paul loves carrying his massive landrover from one room to the next now that he has mastered walking. And just when Penny stopped asking about more presents, my dad came up for Dan's birthday with a sack of exciting bath toys. They've been a smash hit, though their popularity is a blessing and a curse - aaahhh the fights over sticking all of Paul's toys on the table so he can't reach them.

I am glad for the relative calm of the post-holiday season! Now to get through my next round of germs and decide what our next big adventure should be.