Still sick....

I hate being sick. I'm not lie in bed all day sick. Just stuff nose, feel like shit sick. Therefore, I'm at work. I figure that's where I got it anyway, so I might as well continue to spread it around.

My daughter's still being a pill. I don't know how, but she knows exactly what buttons to push and the exact WRONG time to push them. Mommy is losing patience.

What's worse....

than being sick?

Being sick and pregnant. I swear, if it can hurt, it does. I hate sleeping on my side. I'm a stomach sleeper by nature. I can't wait until I can sleep on my stomach again. For some reason, sleeping on my side gives me a dull ache between my shoulder blades. It goes away as the day progresses, but every morning when I wake up, there it is again. Ugh!

And why is it when I'm sick, my daughter is particularly trying? She is pushing all my buttons. And then she pushes all of her daddy's buttons. Just to make sure that no one in the house is in a good mood.

I hope I'm all better soon. I have no patience when I'm sick.

Is This Day Over Yet?

I'm so tired. I just want to go home and go to sleep!

After my husband left for work, my daughter woke up. I knew it wasn't a good sign when she said, "I wake up, Mama. Hold you (she means me, but always says you)."

We made a big pallet in the living room floor. After it became really clear that there was no way she was going back to sleep with the TV on (big surprise there), I had to turn it off. She went back to sleep. Guess who didn't.

Oh, well. The day is almost over, so then I can go home. Surely she'll be tired tonight. Surely.

And tomorrow's Friday. Can't beat that (unless tomorrow was Saturday).

She Understands.....

Since I've been pregnant, I'm very curious (rather than worried) about how my daughter will react to her new baby sister. She'll be about 2 years and 4 months old when Baby Bugger gets here. She seems to understand that Mommy's going to have a baby. However, I don't know if she actually knows the concept of baby and what that means for her.

Yesterday at daycare, they did an art project. The kids are "studying" families and everyone's unique family. So, their project was to take these paper cutouts of a woman, a man, a little boy, and a little girl and create their family. So 90% of the paper families were a woman, a man, and one child. There were about 2 with siblings and one single-parent family.

When the teacher was helping my daughter, she chose a mommy, a daddy, and a little girl. They were gluing (glueing -- how the hell do you spell that) attaching the figures with glue, but my daughter was adament that her family wasn't complete. She kept patting her tummy and saying, "Baby." They know I'm pregnant, so they asked her if Mommy was going to have another baby. She told them, "Baby sister in mama's tummy." So, they wrote "+baby" on the mommy figure (who was nice and slender -- ha!).

I was shocked that she realized that baby sister was part of her family, and that it was important to include her. She wanted to make sure that her baby sister was considered part of her family. I thought it was so sweet. She's more perceptive than I thought. We'll see what she thinks in a few weeks when baby sister is no longer in Mama's tummy and is out in the real world.

My daughter also has another new trick. She insists on chocolate milk. This was meant to be a temporary fix when she wasn't drinking milk very well. We added chocolate syrup to it, and she loves it that way. I've tried to wean her off the chocolate since then, but if I put less in it, she can taste it and asks that I add more chocolate.

When I hand it to her, I ask her, "Now what do we do?"
She replies, "Shake it up."

As a joke, I started singing to her, "Shake, shake, shake; Shake, shake, shake; Shake your booty." Yeah. Not smart on my part.

She now sings along, but has changed the words to, "Shakin' my booty," while she literally does just that. It's hilarious. But I can't stop. Whenever I hand her the milk, I start the song for her. It always bring a smile to my face.

So, would it be wrong to capture this on video to torture her with in about 20 years or so? She can use it as a way to show others how her parents messed her up from a young age.

It's November....

I know, two posts in a row. Starting a crazy trend here. My ivillage pregnancy calendar has this to say about today:

"Bloated. If your blood pressure is normal, and you don't have protein in your urine, your puffy face, hands, legs, and feet are probably normal.
Tired. If you are working, you probably keep a secret calendar in your desk that counts the days, hours, and minutes until your maternity leave starts. "

Not bloated (knock on wood). Tired. Well, duh! What's this about a secret calendar? Who keeps those? According to the ticker I just created, it is just 1 month, 3 weeks, and 1 day until my last day of work. Or 7 weeks and 4 days. It depends on the ticker. But, who's counting?

I'm hungry. Baby Bugger must be going through a growth spurt. I can't get enough to eat. Even with the heartburn and nausea (which has made a remarkable 3rd trimester return -- lucky me), I still can't get enough to eat.

I'm almost afraid to mention that we've gone an amazing 5 entire days without a report from daycare about biting. However, I expect this to change soon since Miss Nicole (the teacher I love at my daughter's daycare) is leaving. Her last day is Friday. She's starting back to school in January and is taking a little time to be with her family. The nerve. Can't she stay through December 23rd?

I did meet her replacement. Elizabeth. I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Our first meeting wasn't encouraging.

It was the day after I got to her daycare and the kids (and their teachers) were on the playground. My daughter was on the tire swing (her favorite place to be). She was about to start swinging when Andrew (the child she "targets" with her biting) came up and put his foot in. He wanted to swing too. I didn't know if the kids often share the swing, so I was watching to see what happened. There were 2 teachers at the other end of the playground chit-chatting. My daughter tells Andrew no and to stop. This was something we discussed as important with the director. She needed to learn to use her words and as she got better about it, the biting would get better. That only works if the teachers are paying attention. If I hadn't walked up, and Andrew had persisted in getting in the swing, well, there would have been a biting incident. So, it was averted. While I was signing her out on the clipboard that her teacher handed me, the teacher was still chit-chatting with the other teacher. Neither of them noticed when my daughter walked to the baby gate to get into the classroom waiting for me. And neither of them noticed the other little boy who walked up next to her. Right next to her. In her personal space. Again, telling him to move and trying to move away from him got her nowhere, so she finally hit him. Both teachers were smart enough not to say anything to my child. That would have started a fight. I am a non-confrontational person (despite the things I think in my head and would love to say aloud), but mess with my child, and I will start a confrontation. I decided not to do anything (as far as speaking with the director), but I was not happy. I wrote everything down and documented all I saw so that it can be addressed if the director sees the need to meet again. At least I can defend my daughter. She's trying. She's only 2.

The next day, I met Elizabeth. I got there, and my daughter was playing in the dirt (near the swings). The 3 teachers were again at the other end of the playground watching the 4 kids in that vicinity. Not a good start. My daughter's other teacher, Jessica, saw me and came to give me the sign out sheet and a note from Nicole explaining why she was leaving. Seriously, I almost cried. Must be the hormones. She told me that Nicole's replacement was sitting under the tree. I walked down to meet her. Now, someone please tell me if I'm being unreasonable or if I was just raised differently than Elizabeth. She was sitting on the edge of a table (easy to get up or down). As I walked toward her to shake her hand (my hand was extended), she just waved and said, "I'm Elizabeth." Is that how you would greet someone you were meeting? She doesn't have to gush about how great she thinks my child is (although that would be a great meeting), but is it too much to ask that she stand up? Or shake my hand? I know that some people don't really shake hands for various reasons, so I'm willing to let that one go, but stand up, it's nice to meet you, something? I can't base my entire judgement of Elizabeth on one incident, but first impressions are important. It left me feeling awkward.

Elizabeth has been in the class learning the ropes for about a week now, and I haven't decided about her yet. Jessica seems nice enough, but she tends to notice only what is in front of her, so if she's playing with one child, all the others are free to do what they want (which is fine if the one child is my child). I don't want the biting to start back up. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best. I hope I didn't jinx myself by writing about it.