30 weeks

30 weeks already! I can barely believe it. I remember being so ready at 30 weeks for Collin to arrive, anxious, anticipating, just day dreaming about holding a little tiny baby boy, and now, here I am again, at 30 weeks and our lives reflect somewhat of a different pace- a bit more frantic, still excited, but always, always, always a few steps behind of where we should be :)

Sometimes I feel I've slighted the new baby by not blogging about him as much as I did with Collin. I think at this point in the pregnancy I had post after post chronicling my ailments, his kicks and somersaults, and all other baby related happenings. While its true I haven't blogged about much of this for the new baby, its not that those things aren't being noticed or even admired, instead, its just about focusing on our time where it means the most, and right now that's with Drew and Collin, rather than sitting with a computer in hand blogging away.

The new baby (who does have a name by the way, that some of you know and some of you don't) who is 10 short weeks from making his appearance in this world seems to take all of my hustle and bustle in stride. At 30 weeks he's made a habit of kicking me, much harder than Collin ever did, usually while at work or late at night to let me know he's paying attention. During the day he tends to push up up up and out out out. I feel as though he has both legs and arms wedged between by ribs and is pushing with all his might to get out, its a constant case of pressure against by belly- almost as though if he didn't know better (which maybe he doesn't), he'd try to escape through my belly button.

He also likes to push up on my esophagus, making my heartburn incredibly bad. Just the other night I was pretty confident he had pushed stomach acid up into my throat. It was like a cup of sulfuric acid was running down my throat. Gross, I know. I mentioned this to our midwife at the latest visit and she prescribed me some Prilosec, which has turned out to be my new best friend. That purple pill has made the heart burn disappear and my appetite and taste buds return to normal! Hooray.
As with all old wives tales, I've heard many a story of how much hair this baby will have related to my heartburn. This is probably true, because Collin was born with a fuzzy head of dark brown hair, but I attribute the heartburn to the science of my mis-positioned stomach and esophagus, rather than a hairy-headed kiddo :)
Surprisingly (and thankfully), the back pain related to this pregnancy has decreased over time. So either, I'm better at carrying the weight, my body learned to adjust, or the new baby just doesn't wreak as much havoc has Collin did on my spine and lower back.
Although, the new baby has presented a whole new set of ailments related to this pregnancy that I didn't have with Collin, most specifically carpal tunnel. I've never had carpal tunnel, so this was an unwelcome surprise for me, as I type everyday (as I'm doing now to update the blog) at work and home and I'm also crocheting the new baby's baby blanket, and as you can probably guess, crocheting with a tremendous amount of pain in my wrist makes for less than productive sessions. So, I just grin and bear it, and pursue the end of the tunnel with a finished blanket in my sights.

This baby has also presented me with my first ever case of spider veins. Now I probably shouldn't complain, because the tiny little patch I have of them on my leg is about 2 cm by 1 inch, but still, they made me cringe a bit. Apparently in pregnancy the increase in blood circulation causes these tiny little spider like veins to appear (which by the way, shouldn't be confused with varicose veins, a much larger cousin), and hopefully (according to my midwife) they'll likely disapear after I have the baby, but still, they make me a bit unsettled. Oh, the troubles women put their bodies through to have babies!

The new baby is also making a much larger impact on my life, from noticing how hard it is to put Collin in his crib for naps (I can barely reach all the way over the bar to get him to the mattress)- pretty soon I'll have to resort to dropping him in the crib!, to trying to tie my shoes and shave my legs (a bit difficult), to gasping for breath every time I reach the top of the stairs (thank you very much little baby!) we are all aware he's a big part of our lives, and is slowing me down, bit by bit, in preparation for all the attention he'll need when he's born.
We've also started putting the nursery together, which is one of my favorite parts of getting ready for the baby. The crib, changing table and mural are all up in his room and Collin has taken a particular interest in checking things out. He likes to move his stool to the baby's room and stare out the window and often asks to go in the baby's crib. I think he likes this because the mattress is quite a bit higher than his and he thinks its a sort of jungle gym. I'm looking forward to finishing the nursery, making the curtains, and taking on my newest project, making a baby quilt to go in his room. Its likely the quilt won't be finished before the baby is born, but I still look forward to working on it.

In the meantime we're trying to get Collin ready for the new baby, and he seems to be enjoying it. If you ask him where baby XXXX is, he points to my belly and he's practicing saying his name. He's also in a super loving phase where he kisses and hugs everything, which is so adorable to see as he kisses and hugs all of the new baby's toys.

We're anxious for the new baby, and getting closer and closer to being ready! In 10 short weeks we'll be able to share our newest addition, and finally ready to relax a bit into the first few months of parenting.

Roar!

To help Collin celebrate Halloween this year we took him to our local Zoo for the zoo boo! a Halloween event where you get to see the animals, do a little trick or treating and not have to worry about being out in the old. Collin dressed up as a little lion and off we went on a beautiful Friday evening to Como Park Zoo.
Once we made our way into the zoo, Collin started to notice all the other people in costumes. He was a bit ambivalent about approaching all of the different characters and seemed to stand back to take it all in. For a few particular instances he was willing to get close or touch the volunteers dressed up as everything you could nearly think of: pirates, characters, animals....

I love that the zoo boo is such an inviting place that we could visit long before bed-time, in the daylight. All of the volunteers were so kind and helpful with toddlers. I loved watching Collin respond to them, trying to determine if the person inside the costume was genuine or a guise. We saw lots of pumpkins, scarecrows, ghosts and ghouls- all of which had smiling faces and weren't in the least bit scary.


We also visited Thomas the Train, Charlie from the Peanuts Gang and a few more characters from toys and Drew's and my childhood.
We really enjoyed watching Collin interact with the other kids there and start to make some adventurous on his leap. It's amazing to see how much he's grown since he's really started to walk (read RUN) and he's transferred that confidence to social interactions and exploring new environments. We really loved watching him think about each new person and decide if he was or wasn't going to approach them, touch them or just offer the tiniest of smiles.


Its hard to believe that next year we'll have two little boys to bring to the zoo boo, one that's 2 and 1/2 years old, and one that is a bit over 9 months. I feel like I can barely remember what 9 months was like with Collin as so much has happened in such a brief period of time. Nevertheless, we'll be wandering along the zoo boo with a double stroller and double the excitement next year.

17 months

Dear Collin-
You are now 17 months old, just a brief wink away from a year and a half. In so many ways 17 months is such a brief period of time, less than three semester, shorter than the time it takes to get a degree, barely time to age a bottle of wine, and as Daddy and I think about how brief 17 months really is, its amazing to realize you've been in our lives on for such a brief period of time, but added such fantastic riches and developed so much that its literally difficult to image what our lives were like without you.
Between 12 and 17 months so much has happened, and while I haven't had time to blog about it all on a monthly basis, its not that we missed the events. In fact, we've reveled in your accomplishments. Shortly after you turned one, at about 14 months, you took off walking and soon after were running. This opened a tremendous amount of doors for you, as you were quick to gather that being mobile meant access to a lot of new things. At 15 months you started to exert independence- tackling whatever you could on your own. In September you started ECFE and began to pick up on the language your little peers used. Soon after school started we heard you start to use the word "mine", which was both a bit unsettling and exciting at the same time, you were picking up so much in your environment, but we couldn't quite be sure it was language we wanted you to use :)
At about 15 months you started what we call a word explosion, saying, labeling and trying to imitate every word we use. You adamantly use "yes" and shake your head in agreement often, you also sign please for nearly everything you can, even when we're not sure what it is you want. Soon after learning please you became fluent in signing thank you and show off your manners and accompanying skills frequently.
Words you love to use are doggie, daddy, momma, nice, enough, car (vroom, vroom), and many MANY more. You really are like a little fountain of vocabulary. Its particularly funny when you say "enough" as you've watched me say it to the dog so many times that you are as nearly as emphatic as I am when saying it. I often say, Samson, ENOUGH! when he's barking like a crazy animal- and now Collin says "ENOUGH".
Around the same time you've learned how to used refined gross motor skills to get what you want. You can climb on your play set independently, including the ladder to the tree-house(which gives me a minor heart attack to see you do), you love to swing on the swings and climb up and down the slide. You also wander through the yard picking up the frisbees to throw to Samson or pointing on the piles of dog poo for Daddy to pick up.
You're obsessed with the lawn mower and love to watch Daddy mow the grass every weekend. You stand in the front window and watch him go back and forth across the grass and clap in amazement of the lawnmower.

Speaking of spending time with daddy, you've gotten more and more attached to him and love to be near him when he's using tools. You admire his screw drivers and drills always watching contently as he uses them to hang things up or make home repairs. You enjoy your afternoons with daddy, frequently going to the park or playing outside.

As you've continued to grow and develop we've enjoyed seeing your personality continue to blossom. You continue to be such a cuddly little boy, blowing kisses and offering hugs without restraint. You still hold books near and dear to your heart- you love the library, playing in the story hour room and checking out board books by the half-dozen every week.
Your personality is coming through in other parts of your routine as well, you are much more persistent about what you eat now, trying to let us know exactly what you like and don't like. Mostly veering far away from vegetables and things with new or unique textures. You continue to love most fruits and cheeses and dairy, and surprisingly, even though we've tried to keep your sugar intake limited, you love it. You have your daddy's sweet tooth and always head toward the sweeter treats- honey graham crackers, honey butter and bread and A strawberry walks into a bar treats.
You are a fantastic sleeper, you continue to go down by 7 pm and wake up sometime between 7:30 and 8 am everyday. Most recently you've made your naps particularly long, 3.5 hours or so, making us think your heading through yet another growth spurt.
You watch small babies with amazement every chance you can and when we talk about the new baby coming to our home you're able to point to him in my belly and repeat his name. We're anxious and excited for this new part of your life, but also a bit heartbroken that our time will have to be shared between two amazing little boys, instead of just one.

For so long we anticipated looking back at how you've developed-enamored with your ability to do so much in such a brief period of time, and now I can't believe I wanted to be able to take such a perspective as it really means that you're not a baby anymore, you're quite a little boy. You epitomize "boy", in love with all things rugged and related to tools, ready to play in water or sand or both at any given moment and anxious to explore the world by running toward it.

I'm not exactly sure how our life will change when the baby arrives, but I do know that I'm taking these last few months in as deep reassuring breaths that you'll enjoy every minute leading up to the baby's arrival, sucking up every ounce of attention and love we can offer. At 17 months you're taking strides as a little boy- attending school, making friends and becoming an independent amazing life explorer.

We love you, and are trying desperately to you slow you down so we can capture your adorable nature and inquisitiveness every moment of every day.

Love
Momma and Daddy

Family, Friends and Fall Harvest

To launch the fall season in Minnesota we were greeted by my parents for a long weekend. They came in September to celebrate all of our birthdays (Drew's, Mine, My dad's and mom's) and their 35th anniversary. Its hard to believe they've been married for 35 years. They are now that couple that last to the very end of the anniversary dance at weddings. It's a bit disorienting for me, because if they've been married for 35 years then that means I'm nearly 30. Oh, where does the time go!


While they were here we battled the rainstorms to get out to an apple orchard for a bit of fall fun. We traveled to Stillwater to a local orchard, Aadmott's Apple Farm. At the farm they also have the Stillwater valley vineyards, where some of the vineyards produce wines that have won local awards. We wandered through the orchard, but because of hail damage this season, we weren't able to pick any, instead we purchased apples from inside the ciderhouse. While we were there we did get to visit with the goats and ride along on a few junior John Deere tractors. Overall though, the combination of the weather and the less than exciting orchard the trip was pretty boring, thank goodness Collin had his grandma and grandpa to help entertain him.


Collin hadn't seen my parents in awhile, a few months or so, so we wondered how he would take to them once they arrived, but within a half hour he forgot that Drew and I were even there. He loved spending time with them, and I'm sure they loved seeing Collin's advancing skills as he ran around the house, played with the dog and asked them to read books and play with him favorite toys over and over again.




Just a week or two after my parents were here we met up with Sarah Hendley, Linnea and Isadora from my grad school cohort to take in another apple orchard and pumpkin farm. This time the weather cooperated and we were able to spend a beautiful afternoon playing with Linnea and my friends. We were able to play on the swings and slides, pet the animals in the petting farm and taste some fresh squeezed cider. While we were at the farm, just a few moments after we arrived Drew called to say that he had accidentally locked himself out of the house, in his pajamas no less. Afton was about 35 minutes away, so it wasn't really feasible to go back and open the door for him, so he spent the morning napping on our back porch and visiting with the neighbors until I was able to get home.


After tasting the cider we stopped for lunch in the Afton store and once we had filled ourselves with fresh donuts, bratwurst and cider we found a seat on the hayride out to the pumpkin patch. We rode along and walked through the pumpkin patch until we each found the perfect pumpkin.


Before we knew it, it was nearly nap time. We loved getting to catch up with Sarah, Isadora and Linnea and wished our time could have lasted longer, but with two toddlers we were well aware of the effects of not getting naps on time, so off we went our respective ways, Sarah and Linnea back down to Mankato, Isadora to St Paul, and Collin and I back home to Roseville.

Slow Food

So, as we approach the birth of our second baby I've found that our lifestyle has taken some unexpected(I suppose, and expected) turns. Some, exciting and new (for example, the idea that there will be two little boys to chase around instead of just one) and some, a bit more foundational in how we choose to live our lives.

After having Collin I found myself becoming the food Nazi that I never thought I would be. Everything that went into his body was either organic, all natural, or home-made. We were pretty strict about this, and continue to be as he grows. Being the researcher I am, I delved into the science behind organic eating, trying to determine if it was just a zeitgeist of the times or if there was some sustainable knowledge behind eating so wholesome-ly. While we all know it feels fantastic to bring food from our gardens to our table, I wondered if the whole organic movement was a bit more hype than truth. For goodness sakes, if I was going to spend 5 dollars a pound on most fruits for Collin I wanted to be sure my investment was worth it.

So onward I went, plugging into every book, resource and spot of literature I could find. I started out watching Food Inc., which is in someways a watered down version of the Omnivore's Dilemma,which contribute to the nature of the food crisis in the US with catchy media and well written texts. Both made me a bit sick to my stomach learning how we receive our meats today, and the issue for us, actually became around meats more than fruits or veggies, which is where this whole inquiry started. After a few months of research I was sold, organic, true farm to table organic, is better for us in many ways.

Issues tackled in these resources- things like Mad Cow disease and what it really means to my dinner table, the implications of adding antibiotics to how we raise animals and the evolutionary change from feeding cattle grass to corn became real issues for me that I won't soap box here, but encourage you, dear reader, to find out more if you care even a little bit about what you put in your body.

Here's one great way to learn about slow food in swallow-able tidbits (tee hee).
Take Part Blog I love this blog because it's a little bit of information on how sustainable food can make serious changes in the world, everyday.

Anyway, back to our story. So, as I was trying desperately hard not to feed Collin any ingredients I didn't recognize (or know how to pronounce), limiting his access to sugar and refined and overly processed foods (No McDonald's or Twinkies here), I found myself surrounded with something 1905-esque. I felt very little-house on the prarie, make it all from scratch, know what you are cooking and eating. But the catch was I've learned to love this. With a garden, a farmer's market, some things from whole foods and the limited, albeit better than nothing organic sections at Cub and Target we're making healthy food choices everyday that we can. We decided we'd be willing to spend more to be sure Collin was eating things that were entirely good for him, and along the way learned a lot about CSAs, organic farms and lifestyle changes that make it easier and easier to eat of local produce and limited processed foods. Now, don't get me wrong, you'll still find a brick of Velveta in my dairy drawer for those winter hot dishes and just yesterday I let Collin taste the sugary icing on a cinnamon roll, but, all of these things are in much reduced, and were happy to say, nearly infrequent moderation.

As we made these decisions we found ourselves searching for a local producer of meats, more than fruits and veggies, as we have a pretty fantastic garden every year, and as fate would have it, we landed at the State Fair right in front of Farmer Dean from my minnesota farmer. We love this family and their farm in Montgomery and between their CSA beef, chicken and fruit and veggies arrangement with us, I can happily say that we'll have lots of farm to table dinners from here on out.

And, even though we've made the switch to slow food, there are still lots of potential converts out there. The organic companies of the world have been trying everything they can to lure in new customers- here's one pretty funny application- a Dairy farm in Great Britain that raps about organic milk.



Anyhow, we've made this important shift in our lives and while we don't expect everyone to understand or consider the same consequences of what they eat, we're especially happy with the food we get to serve our children as they grow, so happy in fact it was worth blogging about.

Here's something to chew on: do you know how your dinner made its way to your table tonight?

Back to the Little Gym

This semester Collin's started a new routine, making strides toward socializing and school related activities. He goes to ECFE on Fridays and Tuesday nights, story hour on Wednesday mornings and to the Little Gym on Saturday mornings.
When Collin started the semester he was just learning how to really move around fluidly.His walking was still a bit shaky, but over time he's running, walking backwards, going in circles and balancing.




Collin loves to play with friends at Little gym, rolling around the balls and catching the bubbles. Its been a fabulous journey to watch him go from barely crawling when we started little gym last year to leading his class along.