35.5 Months and 1 Month!

Well, my boys are keeping me very busy!  We have settled into a pretty nice routine, half way through my maternity leave, and we are finding fun things to do with ourselves every day.  I have not gotten the courage to try to take both of them somewhere on my own though, so I am very thankful that Baba, Aunt Becky, and Uncle Joe are around during the day to do stuff with us!  We have been to playgroups, shopping, the pool at Grammy's, and even a festival in the last few weeks, and I am looking forward to doing more of that, plus a trip to Ohio in the next three weeks before I go back to work.

The first 2-3 weeks with Tyler home were pretty trying, and very tiring though!  He is still exclusively nursing and that really took all of my determination and lots of encouragement from friends to keep up with, it hurts at first!  It also made me feel a little helpless, because no one could help me feed him, I am pretty good at asking for help when I need it, but I was on my own with this!  Thankfully, we seem to have it down now, and I am very glad that we stuck with it.  Losing all of my baby weight before he was even three weeks old helped me along too!  ;)  I am happy to say that all of the maternity clothes are already put away, I had to force myself out of my maternity jeans when Timmy turned 3 months old!  Tyler is still wanting to eat every 3 hours on average, I am looking forward to that stretching out a bit as he gets older!

The strain of nursing is the ONLY complaint I have about having a newborn again.  Tyler is an incredibly content and easy baby.  We have been greatly blessed for the second time!  As long as he is not hungry, he is happy!  At night he goes immediately back to sleep after eating.  And he is quite cuddly!  He is a wiggle-worm, which I could have guessed from how active he was in my belly!  He's always kicking his legs and flapping his arms around.  He makes lots of squeaky noises too, we have decided he sounds like something between a chipmunk and a dolphin!  :)

Timmy is a wonderful big brother and is really enjoying his new role!  He looks for ways to help and he talks to him all the time.  He likes to tell him, "You're such a wiggle worm Tyler!" and sometimes he just calls him Ty, which we haven't done so I found it interesting that he gave him a nickname on his own.  He loved helping give him his first bath too, and Tyler seems to enjoy baths, which baby Timmy did not!

PS~ It only took me a full week to write this post ;)

Introducing Tyler Edward

Tyler Edward Jones was born on Tuesday, May 3rd at 7:49 A.M. exactly as scheduled!  He was 21" long (just like his big brother) and 8 lbs 3 oz (I guessed 8 lbs 2 oz!)  And he is absolutely perfect!

Tyler is as cute as can be and definitely resembles Timmy.  Here are pictures of each of them at birth, see for yourself!  (Timmy, then Tyler)

I insisted on being the one to announce Tyler's name, which meant that all of his grandparents had to hang out in the waiting room for about an hour and a half while I was in recovery.  Tim went back and forth from waiting to recovery and said that I was driving them all crazy.  I think it was perfectly fitting since they were getting to see my baby and I wasn't!

When it was finally time for me to move up to my room, Tim was with me, and we ran into my mom and Timmy in the hallway, who were taking a walk.  Timmy didn't seem too phased by my being wheeled around in a bed, and the first thing he said to me was, "Mama! The baby not in your belly anymore!" So, apparently he did understand what was going on!  They brought Tyler to us and Tim and I had a few moments with just him before letting everyone else come in.  Timmy climbed right up onto the bed with me and Tyler, and he gently touched his cheek and gave him kisses.  Timmy is definitely in love!  When everyone had filed into the room I finally said, "So... this is Tyler Edward."  Everyone seemed to like the name, and it turned out that Timmy had said it a couple times in the waiting room, so a few people had picked up on it.  Dad didn't say anything, but he did tear up a little, Edward was my PopPop's name, and it's my brother's middle name.

The rest of the stay in the hospital was a bit of a whirlwind.  The first night was a bit rough as Tyler was awake for most of it, finally Tim just stayed up with him for a few hours, walking and rocking him while I slept, then after I fed him the next time, I just let him stay on my chest for a few hours and he was happy, so Tim slept.  We had lots of time to nap during the day with him so we survived.  Mom brought Timmy every day and he and Tim would go do something fun while Mom visited with me.  We noticed some hospitality upgrades at the hospital since our stay when Timmy was born.  One day they brought us a special dinner menu and Tim got to eat with me.  When they brought the food up it came on a table with a white table cloth and extra chairs!  You could also have your babies first portraits taken, but we skipped that.  On check out day I got a complimentary massage!  They were appreciated additions!

Tyler is a sweet little guy and very easy going.  He is also very good at nursing, he ate while we were still in the operating room!  This was a huge relief to me as it was a goal to do better with it then I did the first time around.  Tyler sleeps a lot, has a very strong neck, hates getting his diaper changed, and has posed for hundreds of pictures.  I am so looking forward to learning more and more about him!

The experience of having a scheduled C-Section was wild.  I thought that I would know more of what to expect since I went through it before, but it was really different.  While everything was clearly organized and professional, I felt like there were a billion things going on at once, and that it was very hectic.  Of course with my first one, I had already been in labor almost 24 hours and had been drugged for most of them, so I was really just more aware of what was going on this time around.  Same goes for the spinal block and epidural, I was much more aware, and it was not comfortable!  One neat thing was that the same hospital doctor that assisted with Timmy's delivery also helped with Tyler's!  When I realized it was him, thanks to his connection to Radford and VT, he even went and changed his scrub hat for me, to the VT one he wore during Timmy's birth!  Everything went smoothly, though my doctor confirmed it was a very good thing that I went for the repeat c-section instead of a vbac, because it turns out that part of my uterus was very, very thin.  She said for a 3rd child I need to have 'a petite little girl' and that they would do the c-section at 38 weeks!  I was not nearly as exhausted this time as I was after Timmy's birth.  That made the wait in recovery seem even longer!  But finally getting to hold Tyler made all of the annoying parts of pregnancy and the following painful days of recovery all melt away immediately.  Now we'll see how we do at home!

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter this year, going to church and visiting with all of our family!  We started celebrating Saturday evening with some Easter Egg coloring.  I was very surprised when Timmy came home from preschool with an egg he had dyed, last year we had just given him a crayon to color on an egg with.  But Mom braved her kitchen floor and we let Timmy dye his own eggs this year. 

He started out very patiently, dying one egg at a time, and singing us songs between checking on his eggs in the dye.  We went through the ABC's first and then I think 8-9 times through BaBa Black Sheep.  He wasn't interested in singing any other songs, and when he lost interest in that one, he started playing more with the egg in the dye.

He did a really good job of getting the eggs in and out of the colors, he only dropped one getting it out of the cup.  He did knock over the entire cup of blue dye trying to get a different egg out though!  But he sure had fun!

By the end he had green fingers and a blue leg!

On Easter Morning we had time to go through our baskets before heading off to church.  The Easter Bunny was very good to all of us, but he made 4 stops for Timmy!  The haul of candy in our kitchen looks more like Halloween then Easter!  Timmy received two Chuggington Trains from The Easter Bunny and he was ecstatic!  He did ask where the other main character was, and since he is entering the "Why?" phase, he also asked "Hmmm, why the Easter Bunny leave these trains?" As well as asking about everything else in his basket.

After a breakfast of Jelly Beans we headed off to church.  Mom, Dad, Joe, Elena, Al, Becky, Chris, Jenny, and Brayden all attended the same service with us!  We were told that Brayden and Timmy played very nicely in the nursery together, and the music at Service was really fantastic.  After church we stopped by my parents house to get Easter Baskets there and to see them open presents, it was their FORTIETH Anniversary!  We then went to P.F. Chang's for lunch, as has been our family tradition for probably the last 5 years or so.

After lunch we visited at Tim's Dad's for a while and enjoyed the beautiful weather and their beautiful yard.  Timmy ran around playing baseball and with sidewalk chalk and chasing the dogs.  He was in heaven! Finally we went to Tim's Mom's for dinner and more visiting.  Brayden and Timmy even posed for a quick photo-op for us. 

34 Months

Timmy hit 34 months yesterday and although I've been blogging pretty regularly recently, I wanted to write down a few more things about him at this point.  He still plays by himself beautifully a lot of the time, his cars and trains provide hours of distractions for him.  His trains mostly go around his little mat with train tracks, and they help each other pull large loads.  His cars usually line up for races, either on the ottoman or the TV table.  It's funny, his trains are very helpful and polite to each other, I hear lots of "please" and "thank you" and the occasional "bust my buffers" (!) which is how the trains treat each other on Thomas and Friends.  His cars on the other hand like to crash into each other and are more apt to chase each other roughly and say things like "slow down" "come back" and "watch what you're doing" which is in line with how the cars speak to each other in the movie.  I prefer playing trains with him... 

Some of my favorite words Timmy says are "Allthebody" instead of "Everybody."  He came up with this term all by himself, and although I don't repeat it back to him, I will be so sad when he switches to "everybody" instead.  It is so cute when he says "allthebody"!  Tim recently tried to teach him "water" instead of "wawa" which he still says, and I just looked at him pouting and asked him not to take that away from me yet either!  ;)  Another phrase he started on his own a while ago was "Hey! Watch what you're doing to me!" He says this if you accidentally bump into him, or when Tim is wrestling with him. I think it's Tim's favorite phrase.  Ofcourse, my absolute favorite thing that he has started saying, without prompting, is "I love you sooo much!" and it just makes my day when I get an unsolicited hug and he says that to me! 

Beyond those babyish terms, Timmy's speech and sentence structure and understanding have grown radically recently.  He asked me "Why?" three times in a row the other day, but it hasn't taken hold as his primary word yet.  We were doing a lot of stuff around the house this weekend and Tim had tools out upstairs.  I had moved a package of screws into my room, hoping they would be out of sight, out of mind, but Timmy went in looking for them.  I let him bring one out and he got his plastic tools out to fix something.  Next time I looked, he was back in my room.  I said, "Nope, out of there, you already have one screw, Mom said no more."  In response he held up his empty hands and said, "No Mom, I'm not taking more screws, I'm just walking around!"  That type of explanation and cause and affect understanding have come out of nowhere recently.  A brief Time Out episode last night ended with him saying, "Sorry for not listening Mom" before he was told what he needed to do to get out of his chair.

Speaking of Time Out, Timmy seems to be hitting the Terrible Two's more now then in the past year.  But I'll admit, I'll take his Terrible Two's actions over a lot of kids day to day tempermant!  When he decides he wants to do something he asks a million times, even if your response to him is that, "Yes, we can go take a tubby, as soon as we eat dinner."  The Yes action has to be immediate to get him to stop asking!  If your response is "No" it receives a whiny "But I want to _________" and more asking.  There have only been a handful of times that he has dropped to the ground crying over something, and none of those episodes have been about anything in a store.  The only public ones have been over leaving the playground!

Another big milestone is his increased interest in reading.  Tim or I read a few stories before bed every night and Mom reads to him throughout the day.  He has started 'reading' the stories back to us when we are done, and in some cases he knows almost every single word, and he mimics our phrasing and emphasis on certain words.  A lot of books he will say certain phrases along with us while we are reading to him.  He knows his alphabet and all the letters by sight, it's one of those areas that I can still watch him learning.

The kid is still obsessed with being outside, running, and going to the playground.  He is one happy kid with this beautiful weather right now!

Easter Egg Hunts

Timmy got to enjoy two Easter Egg Hunts this year.  The first one was through his preschool and it was fun for us to get to see him interact with his school friends.  The little boy next to him in the first picture is Nate from his class, and the little boy he is chasing in the last picture is Francis, who is definitely his best friend.  The look of joy on Timmy's face in that last picture just makes me melt., he absolutely loves being outside and loves playing chase!  He was very excited on his way to the Easter Egg Hunt, Mom says he sang the whole way there, "I'm going on an egg hunt, an egg hunt, an egg hunt! I'm going on an egg hunt! So. Much. Fun!"  We asked his teacher, and it was not something they sang in school, he made it up all on his own!

 

Egg Hunt #2 was through the church playgroup that Mom takes him to, and it was the second year we've gone to it.  They set up a bunch of other activities for the kids to play with until it's time for the egg hunt, and Timmy had a blast.

Timmy is changing on me again, I swear he got taller again, and I can really see a change in his face in these pictures.  I guess it's just in time, I'm going to go into shock when I see him and the baby together, I swear it was just yesterday when...

Pre-Baby Brunch

This past weekend Elena, Jenny, and my Mom hosted a Pre-Baby Brunch for me.  I was reluctant to call it a baby shower, because I know that you used to only have a shower for your first baby, but people kept asking if I was having one, and I loved the idea of getting together with all my friends.  I have not been keeping in touch as well as I would like since I've been pregnant!

Mom and I did the invitations with my new Silhouette cutter that I made Tim buy me for our anniversary.  I thought they came out really cute!  Jenny did the decorating and found fun games for everyone to play, knowing about my obsessive scrapbooking she even found a game for people to write me advice using candy bar names and she printed everything on coordinating monkey paper so I could keep them in my scrapbook!  The food was all delicious too!  Everything turned out so nicely.

 

 

 

And it was so nice to see everyone!  Besides Sami, who I manage to see at least every other month, I think it had been 4-6 months+ since I had seen any of the other guests!  It was great to do a little catching up, but it also made me miss everyone more and feel like I needed dinner dates with them all individually to really catch up!  Hopefully everyone will be able to come out to meet the new baby after we're a little settled, and we can catch up then!

 

  

 

 

 

More Pregnancy

3 weeks from tomorrow I will be done being a pregnant woman (for a few years anyways) and I will be the mother of two instead.  I am ready to be done being pregnant this time around!  I am definitely looking and feeling pregnant right now.  I am lucky if I sleep 3 hours before having to wake up to pee.  I know this is going to continue with feeding the baby, and be just as often, but I'm figuring at least I can get comfortable on my back or stomach between feedings!  My feet are also getting swollen quickly if I am standing for too long... and in my hot office with no A/C until June 1st... my feet are swollen just from sitting, by shortly after lunch.  I will be wearing sweat-capri's by next week, I'm sure!  This weekend I pushed myself to get the basement organized and my feet were so mad at me that they were itching!

I am also torn between happy and sad because of how the new baby will affect my relationship with Timmy.  I am just as excited to see him in his new role as Big Brother as I was to see Tim in his role as Father last time.  I know Timmy will be wonderful at it!  It just will be different too.  This weekend when Timmy woke up, I talked him back into his bed to cuddle with me.  I'm trying to take every opportunity to give him my undivided attention and just talk to him and cuddle him as much as possible.  I even find myself agreeing to get on the floor and play choo choo trains for longer periods of time this week.  It has been amazing watching him grow and change seemingly every day, and I know that will continue, and we'll get to watch the baby do it too.  It's just one of the many situations that will come up in life that will force the dynamic of our relationship to change, hopefully this one is hitting the hardest because it's first, and because of my hormones!

On the positive side, I love that the delivery is just days before Mother's Day!  :)  Yes, my gift expectations are higher then usual, but Tim always delivers with gifts!  ;)  This baby is still wiggling around like crazy, which I love.  Timmy has felt the baby move a bunch of times, and he likes coming over to snuggle with the baby and give my belly kisses now.  He recently received a doctor's kit as a gift, and he immediately put the stethoscope on to come listen to the baby.  He and Mom will be coming to my next appointment Wednesday morning to hear the baby for real.  We are getting so close!!!