Claire, age 3: first movie and sleepover!

The weekend of July 19th was a big one for Claire.

First, she went to the movie theater for the first time!  (One of mommy and daddy's favorite things to do before kids!)

Waiting for the movie to start

We saw Planes 2: Fire & Rescue.  Claire did pretty well.  She got restless toward the end and was in and out of her seat a lot.  But she enjoyed the experience.  The popcorn and lemonade didn't hurt!

Then we had a birthday dinner for Jeff's dad at a Brazilian steakhouse.  The dinner wasn't a big deal to Claire, but going home with the two cuties below afterward sure was!  (Photo by Claire)

Claire had her first non-grandparent sleepover with her cousins Kiersten and Kerrington, whom she adores. Jeff's sister texted me this picture of them watching TV the next morning.  I hear that things went well but Claire kept Kiersten up late with incessant questions and chatter.  Yep, that's our girl!

Cartoons!!

The next day Claire joined her cousins and aunts and uncles and Grandma and Grandpa for the "Extreme Dinosaurs" exhibit.  She loves dinosaurs but was a little unsure of the animatronic dinosaurs so she spent a little while in Grandpa's arms.

First movie, first sleepover, and dinosaurs.  Oh, and  ice cream afterward.  How her little 3 year old head didn't explode, I don't know!

Boy or Girl??

We had our anatomy scan ultrasound scheduled for Monday, July 14, 2014.  Provided baby cooperated, that would be date we'd have an answer to the pressing question: will it be a 3rd girl or will our family finally get a boy?  We had a doctor appointment scheduled for the morning and dinner with most of the family planned for that evening to reveal the news.

Claire and Ellie stayed with Grammi Sunday night and with Grandma on Monday. So Jeff and I had a nice quiet start our day before heading to the doctor.  The ultrasound lasted all of 5 minutes and baby did not cooperate for many photo opportunities.  So that was disappointing.  But everything looked good and we did find out the sex.  I texted with my mom afterward while waiting to see the midwife.  She responded with "Does she look like her sisters?"  And I told her nice try, but she wasn't getting the news out of me yet.  She would have to wait until dinner like everyone else.

Jeff and I grabbed some lunch at a stir fry place in Atlanta after we were done and then went down to get the girls.  We spent some time at his parent's house before heading out for dinner.  His mom showed great patience, not even looking for a hint about the news.

We met the family at California Pizza Kitchen in Atlantic station, which was a decent meeting point for people coming from all directions.  We made up some scratch tickets to reveal the news.

Scratch ticket

But we first we made everyone vote for their guess with pink or blue straws.

Cute girls with their voting straws

Everyone votes for their guess

Then it was time to stat scratching!

Scratch, scratch, scratch

But all the cards had question marks except for one. (We were up late making these the night before.  So we wanted to minimize the number we had to make).  There were a lot of confused folks until LeeAnn finished scratching hers to reveal the word "BOY!"

LeeAnn has the winner, it's a boy!

Some proud guessers

That's right!  Baby #3 is a BOY!  Finally a boy in the Schulze/Simpson pool of grandkids.

My mom came prepared with a gift for a boy or girl.  So here I am with baby boy's first present.  A set of "little monster" footie jammies and cute, tiny baby socks.

And here are the pictures we got of our little guy.

The little guy's profile

The money shot!
(looking at his bottom from below, he's facing to the right)

We've had a boy name picked out for years.  Jeff long ago requested to use Daniel, which has a lot of family history for him.  It's Jeff's middle name, his uncle/godfather's first name, and his grandfather's first name.  Middle name is still to be determined.  But baby Daniel will be here in December!

The next day we took some photos of the girls for the Facebook announcement of the pregnancy and of the gender.  We got a lot of outtakes but did get this good one.

We're getting a brother!

11 months

Ellie in Nova Scotia on her 11th month birthday

And her 11 month sticker picture

June 26 - July 25

Ellie turned 11 months old on June 26th, while we were on vacation in Nova Scotia.  And she ended it with all her grandparents while Mommy, Daddy, and Claire were in Disney World.  A busy month for our family.

Food: Still much the same.  4 bottles, 3 meals eating mostly what we are eating.  We did start giving her one bottle of whole milk instead of formula near the middle of July to see how she did.  She took it just fine.  She moved fully to milk when we ran out of formula just before her birthday.  (Or more accurately, the formula we sent to Grandma's ran out while the rest of us were in Disney, as we planned.)

Food dislikes include tomatoes, broccoli and pickles.  She's not quite the pasta fiend that Claire was either. She really likes chicken, peas, eggs, beans, Cheerios, and most fruit.  If you let her grab for food out of a bowl, she will grab a giant handful and shove it in her mouth!

Sleep:
Just like Claire, Ellie started trying to change up her nap schedule just as her 1st birthday approached. They both did this to me after I scheduled their birthday parties around normal nap times and finally pulled the trigger on ordering invites.  Ellie started pushing her morning nap time back.  I would put her down around 10 and she wouldn't fall asleep until 11.  Or I'd put her down at 10:30 and she wouldn't go to sleep until 11:30.  And then her afternoon nap wouldn't happen until 3 or 4.  And her party was scheduled for 4!  One day she wouldn't go to sleep in the morning so we were pushed into trying a one nap day.  She went to sleep around 1 but then was up an hour later.  One nap fail!  I tried to get her to make it until an early bedtime but she was too cranky, so she got a small nap around 5:30.

Then a week or so before her birthday we had some things to do in the morning and I decided to see if she could make it until after lunch time.  And she did.  She went down around 12:30 or so and slept for a few hours.  So we kept it up, pushing her to 1:00 on some days.  As a bonus she started sleeping in a little bit in the morning too.

And of course, since we went with it and decided to do one nap the day we had her party, she fell asleep in the car that morning on the way up from my parent's.

Diaper and clothing sizes:
size 3 diapers
12 month clothes (although we are still squeezing into some cute 9 month outfits)

Language:
She's adding some more consonants to her babbling.  "Ah dah" and "uh juh" are frequent utterances. She's starting to pick up some sign language.  She can imitate the sign for more.  She has created her own sign for I want or give me.  She flaps/waves her hand at whatever it is she wants.  It's fun to see how much her understanding is increasing.  My favorite is when we ask if she wants to eat (with sign), she will hustle her cute little butt out to her high chair and wait to be put in it.

Other:
She will help when getting dressed.  She will put her arms up when you try to take her shirt off and put her hands up to find arm holes when putting a shirt on.  If she's feeling cooperative during a diaper change she will put her feet in her shorts when asked.  She will also try to put on her own shoes and shirts.  Of course, she is horribly unsuccessful at it but it's still adorable as she holds her shoe up to her foot.

Pregnancy #3, the first half

Pregnancy #3 is half over and I'm just getting a moment to write about it!

There have been a lot of commonalities with my previous pregnancies but definitely some differences as well.  So, as my dad would say, let's review:

Morning sickness:
With Claire, it was terrible all day nausea and/or food aversions throughout the first trimester.  Very little throwing up but difficult to eat much of anything.  With Ellie I had some mild food aversions and occasional nausea.  Very manageable.  I'd say this pregnancy was in between those two and probably closer to the easy experience with Ellie.

Fatigue:
Again, my pregnancy with Claire kicked my butt and I slept a lot the first trimester.  With Ellie, the fatigue held off until 11 weeks or so and came on with a vengeance.  This time it's been pretty brutal. It's hard to compare to my first experience because I have two kids demanding my energy and attention.  The fatigue really set in around 6-7 weeks.  Around 8 weeks I had a few days where I thought it was getting better.  I even made a note "8 weeks: fatigue better."  A week or two later I had to add "ha ha, not!"  It came back and lasted and lasted.  If it was a school day for Claire, I'd get her to school and then come back home to nap during Ellie's morning nap.  Other days I'd hold off to the afternoon if Jeff was around.  And there were some days that the TV took care of Claire while I took a nap.  Or she would have "quiet time" in her room.  Not my favorite situation, but I had to get some sleep to function the rest of the day.  Trying to make sense of the situation, she would check in on how I was doing periodically.  "Are you sick mama?" or "Are you feeling better?"

One day she asked me: "Are you tired today mama?"
And I tell her, "No, today I'm doing good baby."
She clarifies, "Yesterday you were tired right?"
(Yesterday being a day I took a nap on the couch while she had a snack and watched TV.)

It's gotten a little better in the second trimester so that I wasn't napping every day.  But it's still there limiting how much energy I have to give to the girls and house upkeep.

Emotionality:
My level of irritability and emotionality was definitely the worst with this pregnancy.  I imagine that's related to the fatigue.  There were times I was so out of sorts I couldn't even stand myself and a nap usually helped.  But poor Claire and Jeff had to suffer.  In the early weeks I had such little patience for Claire.  I was snapping and yelling way too much.  I resorted to sending her to her room to play quietly whenever her normal 3 year old behavior was sending me over the edge.  All she wanted was my attention and for me to play with her.  And all I wanted was to sleep or rest on the couch.  I had a little more patience for Ellie since she was still little at 8 or 9 months old.  She didn't talk back, demand food or entertainment (at least not with words), took 2 naps, and was a cute, happy little thing.

And Jeff, well, there were some days I wasn't sure I liked him.  He didn't do anything out of the ordinary to irritate me, he just existed.  And that could be darned irritating.  I tried to hide it and not take my feelings out on him but I'm sure I was less than successful.  Fortunately, he was mostly able to maintain his cool as a cucumber demeanor and ride out my snippiness and sullenness most of the time.  And he was pretty good about doing some dishes or laundry or and taking Claire out to run errands when he could.

I'd say this was another thing that improved as the first trimester passed.  I can tolerate my awesome little family again!

Food:
Like the other 2 pregnancies, I have gone through various food phases with this one. With Claire for example, there were times when cheese sticks, chocolate milk, or goldfish were must haves.  A few weeks later I couldn't care less about those. I go from eating an item at least once a day to not eating it for weeks. Some of my food phases this time around have been:

bagels
cheese sticks
yogurt
ice cream (this one has come and gone multiple times)
corn on the cob
fruit (in July it was peaches and cherries.  Before that it was blueberries and watermelon).

My sweet tooth has been seriously out of control.  Especially after dinner.  Baked goods, candy, ice cream, whatever.  And I'll have something sweet and then want something salty to balance it out. And then want something sweet again. And so on.  I'm going to hate myself after baby comes and I'm carrying way more weight than I'd like.

Growing belly:
I started out this pregnancy still carrying some weight from Ellie so the belly was a little bigger to start with.  But I had plenty of larger sized clothes from my postpartum days to accommodate the expanding waistline.  At 15 weeks I put on maternity pants.  The next day I went back to regular pants because the maternity ones kept sliding down.  But after another week or two I made the switch.

6 weeks pregnant 

17 weeks pregnant (a bump is forming!)

Movement:
On June 22nd, just as I hit 16 weeks I felt definite baby flutters in my tummy.  I thought I had felt something occasionally the previous week if I was laying in bed on my stomach.  But that particular evening it was clearly baby flutters while sitting on the couch.

By 20-21 weeks, the movements were much stronger.  They moved well beyond flutters to true kicks and jabs.

Claire's outlook:
We held off quite a while on sharing the news with Claire.  Mostly for our own sanity.  She's at the age of questions and has a poor concept of time.  So we were hoping to minimize the number of months we had to deal with questions about when the baby was coming.

On June 19th, the girls and I were eating lunch.  Claire was drinking milk from her Minnie Mouse cup and started talking about how she got it when Ellie came.  I ask her "Hey Claire, should we think we have another baby?"  She paused.  Then said "Yeah! But....what should its name be?"  And she was very concerned about that particular point.  I replied "Well, that is the question!"

She's been very accepting of the concept of another baby around.  She knows that the baby is coming around Christmas time.  We help illustrate how much longer that is by listing the trips and holidays that will happen before baby arrives.  First we'll have our trip to Nova Scotia, then our Disney trip, then school starts, then beach vacation at St George Island.  Then after Halloween and Thanksgiving it will be time for baby to arrive!