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Monday, September 12, 2016

Regarding the Monster

I feel like, with everything, I haven't been a very good Monster Mummy the past few months. I can blame that on morning sickness and fatigue and everything else, but I feel like I could be doing better. We have barely done any drawings, hardly any outings together to anywhere other than the store. I was too sick to take him to the park without another adult to chase him, we haven't drawn pictures or read a story together in like a thousand years...

Despite all that, this monster is amazing. I mentioned in my last post he's speaking in sentences. He's also telling jokes and making plays on words. He repeats and learns the meanings of words after hearing them once, and he keeps telling me the story of his visit to the hospital (it was in mid-July), in past tense.

He is crazy tall. I'm sure he's still in the 90th percentile for height (though a mis-measuring nurse had Dr. Illegible convinced he was in the 98th for a bit); for pants he can still get away with 2 T, but for shirts, he generally needs a 4T for length and for his arms (but he swims it it width-wise, the skinny Minnie). He's just starting to get cramped in size 6 shoes.

His coordination is pretty much dead-on for his age, which looks kind of funny, with a 3yo+ sized kid doing the tiny toddler run :)

I could seriously ramble on endlessly about how smart this kid is. Like, it's mind-blowing. I'm actually a little worried about what will happen if #2 is normal. Apart from knowing most of the alphabet (phonetically and on sight, not just remembering a song), being able to count to 13, knowing all the basic colours (including teal!) and shapes, he just absorbs knowledge. He now speaks his other language better than I do, and I frequently have to ask him to tell me in English. Which he immediately does, with no problem. It's mind boggling to me that he understands that different languages exist and how to apply them.

Aaaand, he's going to be 2 in 10 days. 2. 2! I'm really not sure how I feel about this. I mean, it's exciting, but I think mostly I'm just sad that he's growing up so fast. I know 2 isn't really old, but he's not a baby anymore, for sure. He does keep getting better, and I'm sure that will continue, but I do sort of miss when he was a little squishy face. Ahhh!

Well, that's the update on him. Hopefully I'll have an update for his actual birthday. We're having a party for him this year. Well, we're having the family we have in town and our friends who live next door (once I get around to inviting everyone) over for make-your-own pizza and some sort of desert. It should be fun, anyway.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

A Kind of Big Update

I haven't posted for a while. For once, that's been intentional. I have one IRL friend who knows about this blog and I wanted to talk to him IRL before having him read it on here. I didn't think I could post about the monster and my day-to-day without spilling the beans, as it were.

So yes, as you've likely guessed from my none-too-subtle introduction, I'm pregnant again :) Mr. Wolfman and I are very, very excited. The Monster likes babies as a general rule, but I'm thinking he still doesn't really get what's going on.

It's actually been really difficult not to post anything about this. We found out pretty well right away (I knew right away, but didn't officially confirm it until a few days before my period was due), but I had a sudden feeling of superstition and didn't want to tell anyone until at least 12 weeks. We still haven't been able to reach Mr. Wolfman's parents, except for a couple of brief phone calls to make sure they're still alive, so they still don't know, which means we haven't really told friends, because it feels weird for the grandparents to find out last.

So, to play catch up:

  • The first trimester is done. Hooray. I didn't get daily vomiting like I did with the monster. Instead, I just had this pervasive nausea that would not leave me alone. I spent about a month and a half of it on my couch, barely able to move, getting up only to change the monster (toilet training came to a screeching halt), go to the bathroom and take care of food (for the monster). I lost a chunk of weight, though not as much as at the beginning of my first pregnancy. Baby will be along in early March.
  • I started showing way earlier this time. I was right around this point when I first started to show with the monster. This time, I'm already in maternity clothes. I can't even do the hair-elastic trick to hold up non-maternity pants. Basically now, I could probably lie my way out of it, but without question, the first assumption people will make is pregnancy. Not complaining about my body, though, I love that I'm all bump again.
  • I told work this morning; it was getting awkward to pretend like nothing was up. My manager was super happy (maybe a little too happy).
  • Once again, my sister is pregnant at the same time as me. This time she's due about a month and a half earlier.
  • We already have most of the necessary baby gear, so we bought an expensive baby carrier, a "winter" (early fall. Not warm. Damn) maternity coat for me, and we'll buy a toddler skateboard stroller attachment thing* and that's pretty much all we need. The kids'** closet is bursting with clothes, so other than special occasions, we're all set there.
  • The monster is an absolute little chatter box, he's speaking entirely in sentences and is fully bilingual, to the point where you can ask him to repeat something in the other language, and he will. I'm a little worried about how he'll handle no longer being the centre of the universe, but I think when it comes to it, he's going to be an amazing big brother.
  • Everything non-baby related is same-old, same old. I'm still working nights on weekends, still perma-tired, still trying to make longterm plans with not enough money or information. But it's all good. We're getting there.


I think that covers everything for the moment. Now that the cat's out of the bag, I suspect I'll be updating quite a lot more. We don't get our anatomy scan until early October, so hopefully everything stays uneventful until then and we can look forward to learning the sex (not sure why I'm so concerned about it, to be honest. We're not pink for girls, blue for boys people).

That's it. More to follow, I'm sure :)

*I'm up on all the latest terms. Look how lit I am, fam. Lit is a thing, right? And fam? Those are things.
**Such a weird concept for me. I'm still not quite used to it.