Pregnancy Q&A’s

Whew. Well now that this is finally out there on the internets…I can finally talk about it!

(I’d also like to give props to our mossy, moldy, uneven bricks for lending some artsy photo cred to this shot…)

This feels like the longest time to hold back the news from the internet, since we have known from the very, very beginning (unlike, ahem, with Magdalena), but man it’s hard to think of creative ways to announce your third pregnancy in three years.

And every single time I tried to take a selfie with the girls in it for something sisterly and sibling-ish, it just…never worked:

Outtake 1

…and 2…

…and you get the idea.

It’s great to see all the congratulations from everyone, and I so appreciate all of the good wishes! Still, inquiring minds want to know, so I’m going to preemptively answer all the questions you may have (many of which I’ve already gotten in real life):

Was this planned? Are you surprised?

As planned as these things can be! And no. Not surprised in the least.

How far apart are Lena and the baby going to be?

19 months, pretty much exactly. (Lucy and Lena are 15 months apart).

Don’t you hope it’s a boy?

Yeah, sure, if just to use some of the awesome male names we’ve accrued over the years! And out of curiosity as to what our boys will look like. But if not, we know we at least make pretty dang cute little girls!

Are you finding out the sex?

Yep, we are. We are, thus far, just finder-outers. I keep saying, “When we have both girls and boy(s)…” but I think in reality I just really like knowing.  It helps my overly-logical personality connect to the baby as more of a person and less of a project. I like the sense of order and control (knowing we have the right color and type of clothing, blankets, etc), and narrowing down and trying out the names. And this time around, Lucy desperately wants to know, “What’s the baby named??” so we will most likely name him or her so that Lucy (and Lena) can really get used to this new little person who’ll be joining the family.

Are you ready?

Ha, well, let’s see. Physically, sort of.  (If it’s a boy, he doesn’t have a stitch of gender-appropriate clothing, and he will probably be swaddled in floral and heart-printed blankets. Also, we’re going to need a new place for the baby to sleep since Magdalena effectively broke our co-sleeper last year).

Mentally, are you ever? Lucy will be about to turn 3, and Lena will be just over 1.5, so I’m sure it will be crazy town for several months (or years). My potty-training efforts with Lucy are s l o w going, so I am resigning myself to the three-in-diapers fate for a while. And cloth at that, after the first month.

But, the girls are starting to sort of play together in less aggressive ways, and I’m confident that Lena will have amassed a vocabulary beyond her current 10 words by then, so perhaps her screaming quota will go way down? I’m also really hoping that Lucy will finally decide to drink milk from a sippy cup or regular cup so that we can get rid of her bottles (ironically, she’s the one with the paci obsession and drinking milk from a bottle, neither of which her younger sister does). I’m not even going to attempt to break her of the paci habit, since she really loves it to unwind/fall asleep, and she knows she is only allowed to use it in her room.

Really though, those things are kind of not huge deals so I figure we’ll take everything as it comes, and pray for a lot of grace.

 

Are you tired?

Very. Thankfully Lena started sleeping through the night (with forced night-weaning. Had to do it.) when I was about 8 weeks along and at the worst part of the 1st trimester, so that’s helped. I’m also the smallest I’ve been in any pregnancy so if nothing else that is testimony to the energy I burn chasing toddlers and eating on the fly. As usual, not really working out (though I keep resolving to!) and eating snacks every 2-3 hours, and trying hard to remember my prenatal vitamin more than once/week. So I’m aiming to be better at getting to bed at a decent time, and if someone can have a heart-to-heart with Lena about waking up after the sun’s risen and/or after 7:00 AM, that’d be great.

All things considered, we’re very blessed and excited. Also, tiny baby kicks just never get old!

 

 

Ready for Fall (goodbye September!)

What’s up, world? We’re just over here, doing our usual, and getting a little a lot excited for fall’s recent tip-toe into our neighborhood. (Does anyone else get inordinately pumped about switching out most of the summer wardrobe for fall’s?? Or is that just me?).

I feel that over the last couple weeks, we’ve finally reached the point where our daily lives have some semblance of a predictable rhythm. Since Lena has officially and forevermore dropped her morning nap (for better or worse), it means we can actually have a bit of a schedule.

It’s nice to know we wake up at roughly the same time every morning, give or take 15-20 minutes, have the whole morning for breakfast, clean-up, second breakfast (Lena), and outside time or a short outing somewhere before the lunch/nap flurry. And since Lena’s only napping once, the girls’ naps overlap almost all the time now, which is the game-changer. I think the hardest thing about two little ones is having one go down to nap and the other one wake up 20 minutes later, leaving you in a deeply desperate place of no time alone whatsoever. So this is nice. And then the afternoons are good for walks, more outside play, or whatever the girls like to do in terms of destroying playing inside. I won’t go into the Witching Hour that follows, but I’m happy to emerge every evening with (most of) my sanity intact and something edible to serve for dinner.

For the end of our summer, before Tom had to return to work and the craziness that is September for teachers, we did a few fun summery family things like…

A humid afternoon in Georgetown, where we took the girls to the park where we got engaged

Still got the fat rolls on her thighs. Love it! And check out what the humidity does to those curls!

Not sure Lucy understood our explanation of, ‘This is the gazebo where Daddy asked Mommy to marry him…” etc.

What a difference 3.5 years makes!

A couple of local nature centers, replete with as many turtles, frogs, snakes and even OWLS a toddler could possibly want:

A lot of popsicles and outside play:

Her favorite spot: INSIDE the flower bed…

And some sisterly bonding over breakfast:

Curls+jammies+love

And after tragically/stupidly forgetting to reserve some sourdough starter a few weeks ago before making my loaves, we went a few weeks with no homemade bread. The stuff is so, so delicious, and I’d managed to keep my starter alive and thriving for over 1.5 years. Thankfully, I’d given a stranger in my farm coop some extra a few months ago, and she paid it forward/back by giving me back some of her extra. All is now right with the kitchen again.