Nesting

I had really big plans for how prepared I would be by the end of this pregnancy. Since Miles came so early, I didn't feel prepared for anything. Nothing was organized, nothing was ready...I didn't have a bag packed for the hospital. Thankfully, we had purchased a car seat and my mom had brought us some other things earlier that week. Needless to say, that was stressful and it made me feel like I needed to be extra-prepared for this baby.

Here was my list:
-A perfectly spotless and organized house. I actually made a poster with every single chore I could do on it. I wish I were kidding.
-All of the baby's clothes and other things would be perfectly organized and prepared weeks before her due date.
-Miles would be potty trained and sleeping in a "big boy" bed.
-My freezer would be full of food.
-All of my grading and other course preparations would be totally finished.
-I would re-read my books about parenting babies.
-I would make the baby some sort of adorable crafty thing and make a blanket for said "big boy" bed.

Oh, perspective. That list has nothing to do with real life. Also, I thought that nesting was supposed to come with a big burst of energy. I don't think that ever came.

They're inducing me tomorrow. Let's take a look at that list...
-My house is not spotless. It is clean enough to not be embarrassing. Plenty of those chores just never happened, or I decided that things were already fine the way they were.
-I just barely got some drawers organized for the baby last week. There are still things that I am realizing just now that I don't have. Nursing pads! Pacifiers! These things just pop up in my mind out of nowhere.
-Miles is not potty trained. He lost a lot of what he'd learned when he got pneumonia, but he's doing pretty well right now. He also is still sleeping in his crib and will be for a few months.
-My freezer actually is full of food. We have about 12 dinners along with rolls, biscuits, and corn muffins. The exception was my plan to freeze cookies. None of the cookies I froze ever lasted longer than a week. Oops!

This looks kind of empty, but every spare inch of space on the bottom is packed with something and the door is completely full, too.
-I am also caught up with grading. Yay! No angry students e-mailing me while I am in labor!
-I made it through the first chapter of the parenting book. Oh well.
-No time for crafts :) I did buy all of the fabric, though...

I failed on almost every goal, but I still feel pretty successful because A) I realized they were way, way over-eager goals and B) let's face it, just by having a bag packed for the hospital I am about 100% more prepared this time.

The Rock Show

Miles loves rocks. Any time we go on a walk, he picks up at least ten different rocks for me to carry for him. He tries to dig out rocks that are stuck in the dirt at the playground. So, when I found out there was a gem and mineral show this past weekend, I figured that he would enjoy it.

He did actually really like it. Unfortunately, he got deeply attached to the first display case that we saw. He didn't want to leave and we had to drag him screaming to see the rest of the rocks. Such fun...he eventually got happier when we got to the glow-in-the dark rocks. Those were a really big hit.

The other big hit was the walking dinosaur skeleton. He didn't want to get too close to the T-Rex because they were "eating" people's heads. Can you blame him? Luckily, they brought out another smaller dinosaur later and he wanted to pet that one.


Gerrit and I both like looking at different rocks, too, so it was fun for all of us.

Fun and Games in February

Miles and I did a lot of different fun things together in February. Here's a quick (umm...or not so quick) recap of some of his favorites:

Sorry this is such a monster post. This is what happens when you don't blog for a while, but you know you won't have a lot of time in the future to blog either :)

We turned Hugging Bear (my old bear from when I was his age) into a snowman.

We made a Valentine for Daddy with heart-shaped potato stamps.

We drank "snowmen in a cup." It's milk, topped with whipped cream and decorated with chocolate chips and candy corn. Yummy!

We drew a kitty cat together, made whiskers out of yarn, and then practiced counting the whiskers.

We practiced writing his name and used a different art supply for each letter of his name. His favorites were definitely the glitter for the M and the star stickers for the S.

Most of these ideas were from the February issue of Family Fun. Sometimes they just have so many good ideas!

We did a toddler art class at the BYU Museum of Art again. This time, the theme was families, so they had the kids decorate paper dolls of a mom, a dad, and a baby. His favorite two ways to decorate were with Q-tips dipped in paint and with paint-covered marbles that you let roll over the dolls. The snow outside the museum was a big hit, too.




He got to visit with Aunt Emily while Gerrit and I went to see an awesome play about the Lincoln-Douglas debates. A win for everyone!



Toddler gym is, of course, always a favorite. How can you make Miles get over his fear of bounce houses? Put balloons inside it!






We ended up doing a lot of book activities because he loves them so much! Seriously, I think we end up reading each new book about 10 times straight before we can even do the activities.

When Sophie Gets Angry: We did "angry" drums, "happy" drums, and "sad" drums by playing with different tempos and dynamics.

Red-Eyed Tree Frog: This was Miles's very favorite book. He still asks me to read it, but someone else has it checked out. Oops! We cut a tree frog out of construction paper, and then put jelly on its feet to stick it to our sliding glass door.



What! Cried Granny: The boy in this book is a master of putting off bedtime, so we practiced putting Teddy to bed with a blanket, a song, and a prayer.

Click, Clack, Moo: We pulled out all of Miles's stuffed animals and then had him find the one that made the right sound. I wish his stuffed animals made easier sounds. I've been struggling to come up with what sounds giraffes and red pandas make. Does anyone know?

Raising Sweetness: The characters learn what sounds letters make, so we practiced our letter sounds.

Olivia: Olivia goes to the museum on rainy days. We went to the opening of the Islamic art exhibit at BYU. I LOVE Islamic art, and they were giving away free baklava and dates.

On sunny days, Olivia makes sand castles. We didn't have any sunny days (at least not warm ones), so we made sand castles with brown sugar and measuring cups. Warning: this one got messy.

Miles Had Pneumonia

We are just barely emerging from a cocoon of sick days, coughing, and fevers at our house right now. Two Fridays ago, Miles woke up with a cough, but it didn't seem like anything to be too concerned about. He woke up the next day still coughing, and with a fever, but Gerrit and I were already set up to go to the temple so we sent to Miles to hang out with Aunt Marinda anyways. Yeah...I felt pretty bad about that. He was not the happiest little boy. Sorry Marinda!

We could tell something was wrong when he started doing things like this:


It usually takes a very, very long time for Miles to fall asleep, and all of a sudden, he was just falling asleep any time and anywhere. If he wasn't sleeping, he was snuggled up with one of us, coughing like crazy, or begging for computer games. Things seemed to be better by Monday, but he took a sharp downturn with the cough and fever Tuesday, so we headed straight to the pediatrician.

Diagnosis? Pneumonia, an ear infection, and borderline oxygen levels. The doctor gave us a prescription for an antibiotic and suggested we bring him in the next day to check his oxygen again. I wasn't sure that we needed to because Miles seemed to be doing better, but I'm really glad we did! His oxygen levels were even lower. We tried putting him on a nebulizer at the doctor's office, but it didn't help. (Plus, he really, really hated it. It was torture for both of us.)

Now, we needed to take Miles to the hospital. That was pretty scary for me. Miles has been a really healthy kid for the past few years. This was even his first prescription! I picked up Gerrit from work and we headed over to the hospital. Miles did not enjoy getting his vitals taken. It took both of us to distract him. The chest x-ray was about equally as "fun," but we had to have a technician help with that since I'm not allowed anywhere near radiation right now.

Look at this sick little boy! This picture is so sad for me to look at...

Thankfully, right as they were about to hook him up to an IV and run more tests, our pediatrician showed up and told us we could go home because his oxygen was better. I'm so incredibly grateful that it was only a few hours and not the overnight stay the doctor told us to expect. I was also really impressed with the pediatric ward at the hospital. The nurses and other medical personnel we met were really nice and helpful, and they did everything they could to help Miles feel safe and happy. They gave him his favorite snacks and a teddy bear, and they were going to come in and blow bubbles to distract him during any sort of operation. On the one hand, I hope we never have to go back, but on the other hand, I know that it's a good place to go if we have to.

Even better? After a couple more days of not feeling great, Miles is almost entirely back to normal. I missed his energy and laughter and silly little games so much while he was sick!. We're having a tough time getting him away from the extra computer games and snack food we let him have while he was sick, but I'm just glad that he's healthy again.

The enormous sheep at the grocery store agrees with me.