Halloween

Halloween was both awesome and exhausting. I managed to take 203 pictures over the course of two days. I plan to make everyone look at each and every one.

Cooking

Norah has been really into helping me cook lately, which I dig. Tonight she asked for a scrambled egg and not only did she help break the shell but she helped to cook it and added the cheese. I took the pan off the heat and turned my back for less than a split second to spoon it on her plate and when I turned back I discovered that she had dumped the rest of the cheese on the stove (thankfully not on the heat) and was shoveling handfuls of it into her mouth. I am always encouraging her to stuff food into her face, so I couldn't even be mad.

(There was way more on the floor). I helped her clean it up. When we were done she patted me on the shoulder and said, "thanks for the help, Hon." Hon is her new term of endearment. I am not sure where she got it from. I call BVZ Honey sometimes, but never Hon. Perhaps she was an old southern woman in a former life.

Halloween Spider

We are awfully excited for Halloween around here. It is supposed to rain all weekend (boo!) so we are waiting until the last minute to put up the outside decorations. Every year we try to pick up a few new things for the scary front yard and this year we let Norah pick them out. She LOVED the scary Halloween store and wanted the $400 skeleton that rose out of a barrel and glowed green. She didn't get it. Instead, she got a $9.99 pirate torso for the lawn and her new best friend, the $12 spider she has affectionately named, "Halloween Spider" or alternatively "Nemo Spider."

She carries it around everywhere, hugs and kisses it, and wants it to sit with her when she watches tv. She has repeatedly asked that it be allowed to take a bath with her and sleep in her bed, but we have limits, people!


I really love that she isn't freaked out by the Halloween stuff, but considers it to be a whole lot of fun. It must be the de-sensitization she got from Scary Lady last year!

Firegirls

I live for updates about what the girls are doing while I am at work and this was the email (and pictures) that came through yesterday:

We set out for our walk today being astronauts looking for dinosaurs (yes we watched that episode of Caillou again!) since we looked for Halloween decorations on yesterday's walk. As we arrived at Cafe Zoe for our bagel, so did two fire trucks filled with firemen to get some coffee. After striking up a conversation with Ruby and Norah, they invited the girls to sit in the truck and gave them fire hats to keep! A great morning for sure.

PS Since Norah had a dress on today, Ruby wanted her ballerina skirt on over her jeans. One of the firemen said he had a young daughter and recognized the look!

I was really excited to hear that Norah loved climbing up in the truck since she tends to be shy around strangers sometimes (I am sure that having the brave and ballsy Ruby around didn't hurt!), and I don't think she took her new hat off for more than a minute the rest of the evening.

Funkhouser Update: Week 21

Funkhouser continues to do swimmingly. We have had a total of 3 fetal echocardiograms thus far and will continue to do them every other week (on the even weeks) until further notice. The cardiologist suspected we would go to once a week at some point, but as long as things continue to look as good as they have been that might not be necessary. The echos are very time consuming, but I totally like getting to see Funkhouser so often because I am paranoid (shocking, I know). I stole this little meme from a friend's blog and thought it would be a cute and useful way to relate some mundane info. Don't worry, I won't do it too often....

How far along?: 21 weeks.

Weight: No way I am revealing numbers, but I am up only 8 lbs. Which is pretty good considering I am still hanging on to 20+ lbs of Norah. This may change after I eat all of her Halloween candy on Sunday.

Sleep: Shockingly, it is pretty good. I am a life long insomniac and I had major sleep issues during the pregnancy with Norah, so maybe it is all just 34 years finally catching up with me. I have tried to cut down on my water intake close to bed time so I am only getting up a few times to pee, but thankfully am able to go right back to sleep. I busted out the Snoogle pillow the other night and that's making a difference for my back. I have started having weird baby dreams. Now, every time I had a baby related dream when pregnant with Norah, the baby always had a baby body but an adult head and could talk in full sentences, etc. I am sure some dream interpretation book would tell me this means I need to be heavily medicated, but that's how it goes in my head. The other night I had a dream that I was driving Funkhouser around and I looked in the rear view mirror to check on him. He was a cute little baby with the head of John C. Reilly.

Gender: Still a boy. At last week's echo I asked the tech to check. At first he said, "if I had to make a guess I would go with girl" and I thought %^&gffi$%^! But then Funkhouser moved and he said, "oops, nope. All boy." Geesh.

Movement: He's moving a LOT. And I am surprised I can feel it as much as I do because the placenta is anterior (meaning it is at the front of the uterus instead of at the back like it is supposed to be), so he really must be kicking the crap out of me. He is currently breech, so all of the movement from the feet is directly on my bladder.

Feeling: Okay, I guess. As I recently described it to someone, "I feel like crap every other day now instead of every day." I have some bad sciatica on the right side (sharp shooting back pain) that flares up every once in a while. The weather has really gotten cold (which I like), but it aggravates all of my connective tissue issues and my skin has been really angry and irritated. One of the freaky things that happens is Secondary Raynaud's Phenomenon, which every once in a while causes some of my fingertips, and less often the tips of my toes, to lose color. It isn't a big deal, but is kind of a pain (if you click on the link, don't panic. What happens to me is NOWHERE as near as severe as those pictures).

Food Cravings: Nothing really, just lots of aversions. Specifically to any and all kinds of meats (including fish). I can't cook it and can barely eat it. I do okay if it is in a casserole, soup, covered in sauce, etc. but sometimes even that is pushing it. Not much sounds good, other than my nightly bowl of ice cream.

Fetal fruit (There is a website that compares the size of the fetus every week to a different fruit): Banana.

Rainy Sunday

It finally feels like fall around here, and nothing could make me happier. It poured all day long today and even though it ruined our plans to go to Happy Hollow with T & S, it meant we could take it easy and play inside all day. This morning we watched The Princess and the Frog, which as far as princess movies go wasn't so bad. On a scale of offending my delicate feminist sensibilities it was only about a 3. Of course Norah loved it.

After lunch I broke out what I had been saving for just this occasion-finger paints. Beyond a great time, and entertained her for a good 45 minutes. I got Crayola paint, which was non-toxic and wiped off of everything very easily. But the colors were great and Norah's favorite part by far was when I would spread the paint all over her hand and she would slam it down on the paper, creating a perfect hand print.



Her masterpiece. I am totally hanging it up in my office tomorrow.

Later we decided to make Halloween cookies for the neighbors and Norah was legitimately good at rolling out the dough.

She wasn't quite as good at decorating, so once it stopped raining BVZ took her out to splash in puddles while I repaired her handiwork.

During bath time we played her new favorite game-permutations of her as the grown up and me as the baby. Tonight she 'baked' cookies while I cried because I wanted one. Then she took them out of the oven but I still couldn't have one because it was so hot. Then she ate up all the cookies and wouldn't give the baby any. I suspect it was payback for the fact that I wouldn't let her have 1) one with frosting, and 2) 17 more after her allotted cookie.

I will take a rainy Sunday any day of the week.

The Things We Do for Love

I have the world's most sensitive eyes. I literally have to wear sunglasses at all times, even when it is overcast. Norah either inherited my eyes or my giant mouth (okay, I guess it could be both), because anytime the sun is in her eyes she hollers. HOLLERS. Her sunglasses are of no use, she has to have mine. And because I love her (and hate the hollering), I give them to her.

Don't worry, this was not actually taken while driving. We had just pulled into the gas station.

Giants

BVZ really, really, really, really loves the San Francisco Giants. They have been his favorite team since he was a little kid. He has been a loyal supporter through good times and bad and has repeatedly tried to add 'Barry' to the list of potential baby names. We haven't been to the ball park as much since Norah has been born as we have in years past (I think he's been to 5 games a season versus 20), but watching the games at home have taken on a whole new meaning as he teaches Norah the rules, the players, and inundates her with random Giants trivia.

Time is precious around here and there are a LOT of regular season games, so BVZ got in the habit of DVR'ing them so he could fast forward through commercials, time outs, pitching changes, etc. It saved him time, and really, kept my complaining about the fact that there was a game EVERY FREAKING NIGHT to a minimum. Norah can now correctly identify Tim Lincecum (long hair) and Brian Wilson, aka B. Weezy (dark stupid beard). When anyone else in a Giants uniform comes on she hollers, BUSTER POSEY!

BVZ of course was beyond thrilled when the Giant made the first round of the playoffs, but he continued to DVR the games because they were simply too stressful for him to watch live.* As the Giants advanced once and then again, the stress got worse and worse and finally he got to the point where he would pace the floor and watch the text feed on his iphone and then allow himself to watch the action on tv once he already knew what was going to happen.

Last night the Giants won the pennant and advanced to the World Series. When we learned this (from the nice people on the internet), we were watching the bottom of the fifth. There was much celebrating, the tv got turned live, and then BVZ resumed watching the game once the excitement subsided. We considered for about 10 minutes trying to get tickets to one of the first two games, but the cheapest we could find was $500 a ticket. Considering the fact that Norah needs new bedroom furniture and Funkhouser needs a college account, it didn't seem quite so practical.

So even though we won't be there in body we will be in spirit. GO GIANTS!

*It is no great secret that I am not much of a sports fan. It isn't that I don't enjoy the games themselves it is just that I can't stand how seriously the players, commentators and fans take a GAME. There are a lot of politics involved and even more money. I think everyone would be better served if it went back to just being a game, but no one listens to me.

Snug as a Bug

Every morning Norah likes to pick out something special to take to Ruby's. Sometimes it is her doctor's kit, sometimes a stuffed animal, and all last week it was her new set of nesting dolls. Today she insisted on bringing her lady bug pillow and told me she was going to "hold hims in the car and give hims kisses the whole way to Ruby's." BVZ reported that Ruby was just as excited when lady bug pillow got to her house and then Pam later sent this photo.

Any worries I have about Norah not getting a sister are assuaged when I see pictures like this. :)

A Weekend Ending in Massive Amounts of Vomit

It was a busy weekend. First and foremost, it was the weekend of the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin festival. This is our fourth time, Norah's third (actually, technically it was her fourth too, but we didn't know she was around the first time). Anyway, I am not sure why we like it so much because it pretty much encompasses everything I hate-traffic, crowds, and corn dogs. But, for $15 you can get your family's picture with a giant, award winning pumpkin. Basically, that's enough for me.

Last year, what should have been a 20 minute drive took over 2 hours. This year we wised up and as soon as we woke up, we headed out. The festival didn't technically start until 9:00 am, but there was a 7:00 pancake breakfast, which we figured Norah would love. We got there around 8:00 am, and I am very proud to say that it took us all of 20 minutes to get there. Plus it was really cold, so by 8:00 am we were already two for two.

Norah found this rubber duck in a bathroom drawer the other day and it hasn't left her side since. I found it in her bed this morning.

My sweet pumpkin.




The line for the pancake breakfast was insane, so we ate pumpkin muffins and drank pumpkin milkshakes instead and walked around listening to the music. There was an awesome band on the main stage who did a lot of Jerry Garcia, CCR, etc. and Norah went nuts. She isn't a huge dancer and doesn't typically like to get down in public, but she got moved by the music, I guess.

We randomly ran into the B-S family. We always seem to run into someone we know at the festival, which is funny because, 1) there are thousands of people there, and 2) we don't know that many people. Norah and Simon were thrilled to see each other and spent the next hour running around, eating hay, and carrying around pumpkins that were clearly part of elaborate displays.



We had to go to soccer practice straight from the festival, which annoyed me because it cut into my HBO time, but it was fun to see what she's been learning. She is terrible at kicking goals-I don't think she likes it because there are too many kids in her way-but she is really into all of the drills. This week the coach used cones which she thought was fabulous.






After all of that excitement she took an awesome 3 hour nap.

Saturday night we had dinner with Grandpa Gene and Ms. Mary where there was both good and bad news. The good news was that the Giants won the first game of the series against the Phillies, and the bad news was that I didn't take a single picture the entire evening.

On Sunday the H and W families came over to watch football and it was a great time. Again, so great that I couldn't be bothered to take a single picture. The H's have two girls-2 and 4, and the W's have a 10 month old boy. It was awesome to watch how sweet and gentle Norah was with Baby Wyatt-she kept hugging and kissing him and asking whose brother he was. Then she got bored and had a much better time playing with the H girls.

Now, Norah typically has 3 meals a day that are very well balanced and healthy. It occupies a lot of my time, effort, and money, but totally worth it. On days like today, however, I relax a bit and let things go with the flow. Over the course of the afternoon Norah had: 3 pieces of a mini Boboli cheese pizza I made; a bowlful of avocado, black bean, corn, and tomato salsa; 4,000 tortilla chips; a bunch of fruit; some jambalaya; and 2 frosted sugar cookies (the H's brought a great sugar cookie kit and the girls got to frost and decorate Halloween cookies).

It was a hectic afternoon so we chillaxed at dinner time and she got to watch an episode of Handy Manny while she ate her scrambled egg, spinach, yogurt, and toast. She wasn't really feeling it, but she needed protein and a vegetable, so she glazed over watching tv and let me shovel dinner into her mouth. We were close to the end and out of nowhere she let out a big, disgusting belch. We laughed, she said excuse me, and then I told her to finish her milk. Imagine my surprise then when she said, 'oh no, mom' and then proceeded to puke a kind of puke I have never, ever, ever seen before in my entire life. It was all pink (the yogurt was strawberry), and no joke, was the entire contents of her stomach from the past 3 days. I had this terrible moment of panic-pink puke was all over her and all over the couch, so I yelled for BVZ and the second he walked in the room she coughed and did it again. I cannot adequately describe how much vomit came out of that little girl's mouth.

Taking a picture of it would have made me a bad mom, so BVZ grabbed her arms and I grabbed her legs and we hosed her off in the tub. This is what the couch looked like after 2 rolls of paper towels and 3 wet bath towels.

We had no idea if the couch covers were washable, but it was either wash them or throw them away so we took our chances (they look fine). I was totally traumatized but Norah was totally fine (which reassures me that she isn't sick-she just had 2 frosted sugar cookies and her system just couldn't handle it). She got a very long bath and then drank some water and had a little bit of applesauce.

I am not going to lie-I was pretty freaked out. I mean, it was a LOT of vomit. I got her pillow and bear and set her up in our bed so I could watch her all night, but to my surprise she insisted that she sleep in her own bed, by herself. I let her do it, but have already checked on her 3 times and probably will force her to sleep with me when she's too sleepy to protest.

Reaction

We told Norah that she is not in fact getting a sister, but rather a brother. She said, "okay." We've been talking a lot about how she will get to move into a big girl room and the baby will take her 'baby' room. Every time she tells me that she wants to baby to sleep in her bed. With her. About an hour after we told her about her brother she said, "my brother sleeps in my bed, please. With me." She was sitting on the potty tonight and there was a full roll of toilet paper right next to a half roll. She said about the big roll, "this is for me" and about the little roll, "this is for my brother." I think she's into it. BVZ and I were talking baby names tonight (don't ask, we got nowhere) and every time I made a suggestion Norah would announce, "I don't like it." We asked her what she wanted to name him and she said. "Grover. No, Caillou." She doesn't get a vote anymore.

The only person more excited about the prospect of another girl was Megan. Stephanie texted me this afternoon that she broke the boy news and Megan said, and I quote, "Are you serious? Shouldn't the doctor have known before now? I mean, how hard is it to see a penis*, I mean it just hangs out there. It's hard to miss." It is so awesome being 9. Trevor apparently listened to her tirade and said, "yeah, that is true. But, yay! Boys are now winning, 3 to 2!" Yes, indeed they are Trevor. Yes, indeed.

The following pictures are unrelated but cute....

Norah has never been a big juice drinker and we've never pushed it. Recently we got some Odwalla Superfood juice which is kind of thick and green and full of good stuff. She loves it. A half gallon of the stuff also costs more than a gallon of organic milk, so we dole it out sparingly (like about a shot glass amount a day). We were out of it this evening so I placated her with orange (ie, "yellow" juice). She told me, "green is much better than yellow."

I told her when I got home from work that her hair looked really pretty. After I took a picture of her with her juice she said, "Mom, my hair looks really pretty. Take a picture of it."

Introducing Mini-Me.

*For the record, this is the first appearance of the word penis on this blog. I fear it definitely won't be the last.

Garage Baby

Garage is Norah's favorite thing to play these days. Most of the time we do dramatic re-enactments of the little people falling off the elevator tower and being rushed to Dr. Rambo's hospital with a broken arm.

In this picture you can see (from left to right): Uncle Kiki, Bad Pirate, Mommy (who happens to be the African-American lady pirate), and Garage Baby.

Have I mentioned how much I love this kid?

BREAKING NEWS

So, I guess you can't always trust technology.

This morning we found out, with no question left in anyone's mind, that Funkhouser is a BOY. I've got the pictures to prove it. Holy schmoly. My jaw is still on the floor and BVZ is just as shocked. We survived girl, we know what to do with a girl, we got baby girl down. What the &%!>! are we going to do with a boy???

I would be lying if I said an itty bitty part of me wasn't a little sad. We had our heads wrapped around the idea of another girl and I was really, really, really excited that Norah was going to get a same sex sibling. Don't get me wrong, I am REALLY excited to have a boy and beyond thrilled that he is perfectly healthy (which honestly, is the only thing we care about). But, it's going to take some getting used to.

YAY, BOYS!!!!

Sunday Funday

We had a jam packed day today. Things kicked off with brunch at our house with the K-F family. It was so enjoyable that I didn't take a single picture. The K-F's have almost 11 year old twin boys as well as a 2 year old girl. The twins entertained the toddlers in Norah's room after we ate and the grown ups got to talk uninterrupted for a whole hour. At one point I went to check on the kids and Norah told me, 'I love you mom, please go away' and then asked me to close the door. I hope the boys are available for babysitting gigs.

Ruby got to go to a pumpkin patch yesterday and Norah has been obsessed with pumpkins since seeing the pictures. We got her to take a nap today by promising we'd go to a patch this afternoon. It was after 3:00 pm by the time we were ready to go so instead of going to a legit pumpkin patch (you know, the ones with animals, hay, and shade), we tried to cut some corners and took her to a parking lot pumpkin patch on El Camino.

At first we were stoked because it looked really cool-with bouncy houses galore so we didn't even balk at the $9 per kid entrance fee.

It was a really neat place-for the over 6 crowd. The houses were very cool, but way too advanced for Norah. Most had huge slides and required the kid be able to navigate inflatable ladders. Parents weren't allowed in the houses, so we couldn't even get in there to help her out.

So, we concentrated on the pumpkins on the burning hot asphalt. I always forget how hot it is here in October. I really can't complain about the weather here too much, but October needs to be about sweaters and pumpkin spice lattes. Instead, it's just hot.



Norah did venture into the ark bouncy house and after about 10 minutes figured out how to get up the ladder (see it in the background? It's hard to get up!)

This is what it looked like from the outside. See that lady? She kept yelling at her kids, 'hurry up! I need a snow cone!' Me too, lady.

Thinking about going down the slide.

Cowabunga! See BVZ back there? He snuck in once Norah was at the top yelling, 'I'm stuck, I'm stuck!' Thankfully he did not slide down.

We had a moment when Norah realized she wasn't going to get to go into the giant shark bouncy house, but crisis was averted when we told her she could pick out two pumpkins of her choice.

She touched, patted, hugged (and may have licked) them all.





We ended up with two that she originally named Norah and Ruby, but then later changed to Beauty and The Beast, and then later Belle and Daddy. [As a quick aside, she is currently obsessed with the main song from Beauty and the Beast. She has never seen the movie and I don't think knows anything about the story, but she and Ruby watch the YouTube video of the song with Pam and it is her current favorite. She can sing the last refrain, 'tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme, Beauty and the Beeeeeeaaassssst.' She sings loud and frequently. I keep trying to get it on video-it will happen soon, I promise.]

Gigi was also here today because she flew into SFO from Moscow last night. Gigi and Aunt Vanessa had been on vacation in Russia and they brought Norah the coolest present of all time-Russian nesting dolls.

To say she loves them would be a gross understatement. After just a few tries she became quite adept at organizing them, opening them, and making me talk to her pretending to be them. It was a GREAT present.

This is what she did every time I asked her if I could take a picture of her with her dolls.



Fun Sunday. Clearly going to be a manic Monday.