By an interesting coincidence of scheduling, Emmie and I started fasting at midnight on Ash Wednesday for a blood glucose test. The fasting made a long morning feel even longer. Actually, a short night also made the morning feel extra long.
We ate dinner around 8:00 last night, and I fell asleep when Lucy did at 10:30. I didn't wake up until 2:00, so I missed my opportunity for an 11:30 snack. That meant that my 8-hour fast ended up being a 12-hour fast. At around 3:00 Lucy woke up as she typically does and got into bed with me. Unfortunately, she couldn't settle and cried inconsolably. We gave her some ibuprofen, but that didn't help. We couldn't figure out if her legs hurt or if her belly hurt or if she had had a bad dream or if her pajamas were bothering her. All seemed like possibilities because of the way she acted. She climbed out of bed, walked into the hall, look confused, and cried some more. She refused to go back to bed, so we went to her room. I changed her from footie pajamas to her Elmo Abby pajamas. She cuddled up next to me in the chair and after about half an hour finally fell asleep still gasping and hiccuping from all of the crying. That was around 5:00. I waited a while before moving her to her bed. Sometime during the 2+ hours of soothing Lucy, Emmie became active. She might have been bothered by my rumbling stomach. Or she may have been reacting to Lucy's cries. I've noticed her being more active when Lucy cries. I'm not sure if she's sympathetic and offering comfort or irritated by the noise. I've also considered that she thinks there's a riot and is trying to join in. Eventually, she settled down, too, and I got another hour or so of sleep before I needed to get up, drive to Lebanon, and get my blood tested.
I got ready quickly and discovered that my phone was missing. I called my cell phone from our home phone and narrowed the location to the study. I still had trouble finding it and had to call myself five more times before I found it in the bag with Lucy's toy cars, rolled into the play mat quilt that Grandma made her. I finally got on the road, driving slowly because of road conditions. Several times it started snowing again. By the time I arrived at the doctor's office, I was exhausted from focusing so intently on the road.
The blood test went fairly quickly. Hopefully, I did really well. I have a feeling that if I'm within normal range but not close to ideal, then I'll have to take the longer test because our doctor is being so cautious. If I didn't pass, I'll get a call sometime this week. In addition to the blood test, I had an appointment this morning.The nurse weighed me (down a pound thanks to the pool being open again) and took my blood pressure (normal). I saw the nurse practitioner. Apparently, my trip to the emergency room last week was not in my records. When I told the nurse practitioner about it, she asked if they did an ultrasound. They didn't, so she ordered one. She wanted to make sure that the placenta hadn't slipped down over my cervix. So I got to see Emmie again. This time because of the 12-hour fast, she wasn't moving as much. She was still wiggling, but she wasn't obstructing the view this time, so I actually got a profile picture and a shot of her yawning. The placenta was right where it should be. They also did a vaginal ultrasound to measure my cervix. It was a little short. The nurse practitioner did an exam and said it was also softer than it should be at 24 weeks. She wasn't overly concerned, but she put me on "vaginal rest." As far as I can tell, that just means no sex. Let's be honest, if some part of me has to be on doctor-ordered rest, my vagina is probably the part I can do without the most. Most of my other parts are essential when taking care of Lucy. I'm also supposed to rest and get off of my feet frequently. I've been doing that anyway. I've been more tired and in more pain during this pregnancy.
I ate only a few bites of a sandwich before heading home. Matt is supposed to be at school at 11:00, and I was going to get home after 10:30. Fortunately, driving conditions were better on the way home. About 10 miles out of town, Emmie started kicking me insistently. I told her we'd be home soon, and we'd eat something. I could hear Lucy excitedly shouting about my return before I even got the door open. Matt was in the shower. I told him about my morning and showed him the photos. And then Emmie and I had pancakes left over from yesterday. We were both glad to end our Ash Wednesday fast.
Our next appointment is in Louisville in a couple of weeks. If that goes well, we won't have to go to Louisville anymore. Then we already have two appointments, including a growth measurement ultrasound, scheduled with our OB in March. And then we'll be in April, when I expect weekly visits to begin. If all goes well, Emmie will be here in about three months.
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Thursday, February 4, 2016
A Little Sore, But All Is Well
Yesterday got a little more exciting than we wanted for a little while. I discovered blood on my toilet paper after going to the bathroom. That is not where you want to see blood when you're 23 weeks pregnant. I was concerned. I googled "23 weeks pregnant spotting," which is a dangerous thing to do because you can find horror stories, and was mostly reassured. But mostly reassured isn't quite enough with my history. I lay on my right side for a while to see if Emmie would move. She didn't. I was more worried. I ate some peanut butter crackers, and she still didn't move. More worried. I lay on my back instead, and in just a minute Emmie greeted me. Less worried.
I never had spotting with my first two pregnancies, but I've had spotting every couple of months with Emmie. It's nerve-wracking every time. Previously, she's been so little that if the spotting meant there was a real problem, there wasn't much to do about it. The solution to many problems in pregnancy is to deliver, but that's not an option at 10 weeks or 16 weeks, so you just have to hope and pray and wait. But at 23 weeks there's at least a chance that she could live if she were delivered. And so if my body is telling me there might be a problem, I should make sure that everything is OK. I would hate to lose a viable baby because I ignored blood.
So I called my doctor's office. My doctor's office really needs to rethink what they play while you're on hold. I think it was a radio station. The first thing I heard was the obituaries. Just what I needed. And the first song they played was Electric Light Orchestra's "Living Thing," the chorus of which says, "It's a living thing. What a terrible thing to lose." Seriously. I don't know that English majors are more superstitious, but we've spent a lot more time considering foreshadowing than many people. As I heard these things, I told Matt, and he found them as comically ominous as I did, and that's one of the many reasons I love him. If we were superstitious, it would have been ominous but not comical. Eventually the nurse told me (predictably, because we're special) to go to the emergency room. I immediately called Shawn and Susie, who dropped everything to watch Lucy while we went to the hospital in Lebanon. I'm not sure I can ever express how wonderful Shawn and Susie are.
We checked into the ER and the Women's Center. They checked my urine to make sure that I didn't have urinary or kidney problems. Then they hooked me up to the fetal monitor. Emmie had been moving during the car ride, so I was pretty sure she was OK, but I always hold my breath when they check for a heartbeat. They weren't sure the monitor would pick her up because she's so little, but the monitor found her fairly quickly. And then she found the monitor. We have quite a bit of experience with fetal monitors. All three of our babies have been hooked to them at some point. And we knew that Neil and Lucy had fought the monitor, pushing and kicking to get it off my belly. Neil was more methodical, but they were both tenacious. It turns out that Emmie is similarly tenacious, and she did try both quick kicking and sustained pushing to move the monitor. She kicked the monitor so hard that I felt it bounce against my belly. I asked Matt if he wanted to watch to see if he could see her move the monitor. After a few minutes he saw her kick hard enough to make the monitor bounce again. She's less than 6 months, and she's already affecting the outside world. The nurse was very impressed, not just with the kicking but also with how well Emmie's heartrate tracked for half an hour on the monitor. She showed the doctor the print-out and said, "Have you ever seen a 23 week track like that?" He hadn't. So Emmie is strong and exceptional.
The lab found no problem with my urine sample. The monitor showed I didn't have any contractions. The doctor did an internal exam and found no blood. He also found my cervix was "holding up well" (for a third pregnancy? despite my advanced maternal age?). So everything was fine. He decided I should go ahead and get my Rho-gam shot (routine because Matt and I have different blood Rh) while I was at the hospital, which sounded good to me. It ended up taking three hours, which is two hours longer than it's ever taken before. My Kindle ran out of energy, and I had time to delete almost 200 text messages from my phone. We hadn't had supper, so a nurse brought us some snacks. It was a long day.
We talked to the doctor about why I had bled in the first place. What we figured out is that pregnant women should not lift six-quart enamel-coated cast iron Dutch ovens. I had been doing dishes, and when I picked up the Dutch oven, I grunted because it was heavier than I expected. Apparently, it was heavy enough to make me bleed a little. And it was heavy enough that my entire abdomen is still feeling tender 12 hours later. So no more lifting. I'm not even lifting Lucy at this point.
We were so glad that Lucy was in good hands because we didn't get home until after 10:00. Shawn and Susie played with her outside while we were leaving. Lucy waved goodbye and talked to them about her "beep" and then ran to the back yard to play some more. She didn't miss us at all for more than 5 hours. They took her for supper in the university's dining hall. She even got to eat with her friend Selah, who she hasn't seen in several months. I asked if she freaked out when Selah left. Lately she cries "friend, friend" so pitifully when one of her friends leaves that it tugs at my heart. She was getting upset until Selah ran back to give her a bracelet, which made the parting OK for Lucy. After they got back to our house, they played and watched Shaun the Sheep. Lucy just said "Shaun Baa" for the first time today to name the show. Previously, she's just bleated to request it. She's been saying "Shawn" for weeks. In fact, yesterday she was lying under the dining table naming who each chair belongs to: "me seat, Daddy seat, Mommy seat." And I expected her to skip the fourth chair at the table, but she labeled it "Shawn seat." She's right. That's where he sits when they come to dinner and when he plays games with Matt. So Shawn was part of her vocabulary before Shaun, despite the fact that she's spent many more hours watching Shaun. Tonight she transferred all of her Daddy and Mommy ideas onto Shawn and Susie. She used Shawn as a jungle gym like she does Matt. Mommy doesn't play that way, especially now, so she seemed to assume that Susie wouldn't either. I also tend to be pretty tired in the evenings, so she's been spending more time cuddled up with Matt than she used to. When we got home, she was cuddled up to Shawn playing Daniel Tiger on her tablet. I don't know how she would have handled bedtime without us if we had been out later, but it's good to know she can be fine so long with Shawn and Susie. Our plan is for them to keep her while I'm in the hospital having Emmie and recovering in May. I think this test run was a success.
So despite a scare it turned out to be a good day. I'm fine and have a comment-worthy cervix. Matt has to do all the heavy lifting per doctor's orders. Emmie is active, strong, and exceptional. Lucy can see us leave and have someone watch her for hours, all without a tear. And we have the best friends in the world. (We already knew that last part.) It was a long but reassuring day.
I never had spotting with my first two pregnancies, but I've had spotting every couple of months with Emmie. It's nerve-wracking every time. Previously, she's been so little that if the spotting meant there was a real problem, there wasn't much to do about it. The solution to many problems in pregnancy is to deliver, but that's not an option at 10 weeks or 16 weeks, so you just have to hope and pray and wait. But at 23 weeks there's at least a chance that she could live if she were delivered. And so if my body is telling me there might be a problem, I should make sure that everything is OK. I would hate to lose a viable baby because I ignored blood.
So I called my doctor's office. My doctor's office really needs to rethink what they play while you're on hold. I think it was a radio station. The first thing I heard was the obituaries. Just what I needed. And the first song they played was Electric Light Orchestra's "Living Thing," the chorus of which says, "It's a living thing. What a terrible thing to lose." Seriously. I don't know that English majors are more superstitious, but we've spent a lot more time considering foreshadowing than many people. As I heard these things, I told Matt, and he found them as comically ominous as I did, and that's one of the many reasons I love him. If we were superstitious, it would have been ominous but not comical. Eventually the nurse told me (predictably, because we're special) to go to the emergency room. I immediately called Shawn and Susie, who dropped everything to watch Lucy while we went to the hospital in Lebanon. I'm not sure I can ever express how wonderful Shawn and Susie are.
We checked into the ER and the Women's Center. They checked my urine to make sure that I didn't have urinary or kidney problems. Then they hooked me up to the fetal monitor. Emmie had been moving during the car ride, so I was pretty sure she was OK, but I always hold my breath when they check for a heartbeat. They weren't sure the monitor would pick her up because she's so little, but the monitor found her fairly quickly. And then she found the monitor. We have quite a bit of experience with fetal monitors. All three of our babies have been hooked to them at some point. And we knew that Neil and Lucy had fought the monitor, pushing and kicking to get it off my belly. Neil was more methodical, but they were both tenacious. It turns out that Emmie is similarly tenacious, and she did try both quick kicking and sustained pushing to move the monitor. She kicked the monitor so hard that I felt it bounce against my belly. I asked Matt if he wanted to watch to see if he could see her move the monitor. After a few minutes he saw her kick hard enough to make the monitor bounce again. She's less than 6 months, and she's already affecting the outside world. The nurse was very impressed, not just with the kicking but also with how well Emmie's heartrate tracked for half an hour on the monitor. She showed the doctor the print-out and said, "Have you ever seen a 23 week track like that?" He hadn't. So Emmie is strong and exceptional.
The lab found no problem with my urine sample. The monitor showed I didn't have any contractions. The doctor did an internal exam and found no blood. He also found my cervix was "holding up well" (for a third pregnancy? despite my advanced maternal age?). So everything was fine. He decided I should go ahead and get my Rho-gam shot (routine because Matt and I have different blood Rh) while I was at the hospital, which sounded good to me. It ended up taking three hours, which is two hours longer than it's ever taken before. My Kindle ran out of energy, and I had time to delete almost 200 text messages from my phone. We hadn't had supper, so a nurse brought us some snacks. It was a long day.
We talked to the doctor about why I had bled in the first place. What we figured out is that pregnant women should not lift six-quart enamel-coated cast iron Dutch ovens. I had been doing dishes, and when I picked up the Dutch oven, I grunted because it was heavier than I expected. Apparently, it was heavy enough to make me bleed a little. And it was heavy enough that my entire abdomen is still feeling tender 12 hours later. So no more lifting. I'm not even lifting Lucy at this point.
We were so glad that Lucy was in good hands because we didn't get home until after 10:00. Shawn and Susie played with her outside while we were leaving. Lucy waved goodbye and talked to them about her "beep" and then ran to the back yard to play some more. She didn't miss us at all for more than 5 hours. They took her for supper in the university's dining hall. She even got to eat with her friend Selah, who she hasn't seen in several months. I asked if she freaked out when Selah left. Lately she cries "friend, friend" so pitifully when one of her friends leaves that it tugs at my heart. She was getting upset until Selah ran back to give her a bracelet, which made the parting OK for Lucy. After they got back to our house, they played and watched Shaun the Sheep. Lucy just said "Shaun Baa" for the first time today to name the show. Previously, she's just bleated to request it. She's been saying "Shawn" for weeks. In fact, yesterday she was lying under the dining table naming who each chair belongs to: "me seat, Daddy seat, Mommy seat." And I expected her to skip the fourth chair at the table, but she labeled it "Shawn seat." She's right. That's where he sits when they come to dinner and when he plays games with Matt. So Shawn was part of her vocabulary before Shaun, despite the fact that she's spent many more hours watching Shaun. Tonight she transferred all of her Daddy and Mommy ideas onto Shawn and Susie. She used Shawn as a jungle gym like she does Matt. Mommy doesn't play that way, especially now, so she seemed to assume that Susie wouldn't either. I also tend to be pretty tired in the evenings, so she's been spending more time cuddled up with Matt than she used to. When we got home, she was cuddled up to Shawn playing Daniel Tiger on her tablet. I don't know how she would have handled bedtime without us if we had been out later, but it's good to know she can be fine so long with Shawn and Susie. Our plan is for them to keep her while I'm in the hospital having Emmie and recovering in May. I think this test run was a success.
So despite a scare it turned out to be a good day. I'm fine and have a comment-worthy cervix. Matt has to do all the heavy lifting per doctor's orders. Emmie is active, strong, and exceptional. Lucy can see us leave and have someone watch her for hours, all without a tear. And we have the best friends in the world. (We already knew that last part.) It was a long but reassuring day.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Training in Progress
Lucy seems to get bigger every day. People who didn't see her during Christmas break keep telling us they're sure she grew six inches during that time. All of the 18-month clothes have been moved upstairs now. The 2T clothes are now in her dresser with the 24-month clothes. Some are a little big, but she's growing into them.
Lucy is also showing new skills nearly every day. She adds a couple of words a day to her vocabulary. Yesterday she looked at her wrinkled fingers in the pool and said, "Mama, me pruney." I probably should have taught her the word wrinkled first, but it works. She is learning more verbs and making more sentences. She still refuses to say her name. The other day I asked her what her name is, and she said, "Me." Well, yes, me is "a name I call myself" according to The Sound of Music. She is starting to build with Duplo blocks all by herself. I typically join her and add to the complexity of the sheep house that she's building. That's what she always builds. She attaches the rooms to the Duplo table and adds other blocks and puts people and animals inside. She has also gotten into playing with the Little People House and her magnetic doll house. She "measures" everything with her measuring tape. She still recognizes letters and numbers. The other day she was scribbling on a chalkboard and suddenly stopped and pointed to some of the marks she had made and told me it was a Y. She was right. She didn't make a Y on purpose, but she recognized she had done it.
She is making progress on showing self-control and patience, even though she's still independent, strong-willed, and two. She tends to help clean up her toys, sometimes without prompting. Every once in a while, she'll refuse to help for a few minutes and sometimes pitch a little fit, but when asked again later, she'll eagerly jump up and help. If we could just fix that occasional pitch-a-fit stage, she'd be pretty well behaved. She's still energetic and doesn't sit still for long, which some people would consider being poorly behaved, but I'm OK with her need to go and do and move at this point as long as she isn't hurting anything or anyone and is making progress in controlling herself. She doesn't tend to hurt, and she is making progress, so I can be somewhat content with that for now.
Since Lucy is getting so big (and our lives are about to get more complicated), we've been working with Lucy on a couple of life skills. Getting Lucy to sleep has always been a problem. Since I'm expecting to live in a recliner for a couple of months after another C-section, we needed to get Lucy to a point where she could get to sleep without my lying next to her. We have succeeded! Matt and I both go to her room with her for bedtime. I sit in the recliner, and Matt sits next to her mattress on the floor. We read books until she gets tired. I offer hugs and kisses, and she grabs her water bottle (her comfort item) and lies down on her mattresses and falls asleep. Some nights are better than others, but she's doing really well. A couple of nights she has needed more human contact to fall asleep, so she has cuddled up to Matt on the floor and fallen asleep. That's fine with us. She even gets into bed herself on Thursday nights when Matt is at game night. It's pretty fantastic. The freedom makes me a little giddy. I tend to fall asleep in the recliner, sometimes before she's asleep.
The other training we are doing is potty training. We haven't pushed her. We've just kept talking up life without diapers and giving her opportunities to sit on her Elmo potty seat. The training has been stalled for a while. She was willing to sit but almost never peed in the toilet. Yesterday she started refusing to even sit on her Elmo seat. I was OK with stalled but not OK with regression. So today I stripped her naked from the waist down and made her stay on a vinyl table cloth in the dining room for a couple hours. We played together, building sheep houses, and we ate snacks. She didn't like being confined to the table cloth, but she stayed fairly well. She peed on the table cloth twice and was horrified both times. The first time we dried the table cloth with a towel, and I took her to sit on the toilet and reminded her that she should let me know if she needs to pee so that she can do it on the toilet or on a potty seat (two of which were on the table cloth with her). The second time she peed, she immediately jumped up and said, "Mama, pee! Agh!" We dried it and sat her on the toilet, and she peed on the toilet! She had stopped herself when she realized she was peeing and finished on the toilet! She was praised lavishly and given a sticker to put on her shirt. She stayed diaperless until Matt got home from work (the deadline I had given her). Then she got to wear a diaper again. I thought we could do that every day for a while and gradually increase the amount of time she spends without a diaper. Today was successful. I hope this method continues to work for her. I don't have a time table for potty training her. I'm just glad to be making progress again. I just ordered a huge supply of her size of Elmo diapers (Pampers) from Amazon, so we're ready for however long it takes her. And if she doesn't use them all, we'll save them for Emmie.
Speaking of Emmie, she is quite a kicker. I told Matt that I think she's gone from wiggling and fluttering to full-blown kicking faster than her siblings did. And boy can she kick! Yesterday, she kicked me hard enough to knock my hand off my belly. She was also doing somersaults, which feels like my organs went on a roller coaster without the rest of me. She appreciates it when I rest and when I eat, but I haven't noticed any other preferences yet.
I've been talking to Emmie, typically saying, "Hi, Emmie," when she kicks. Yesterday Lucy said, "No Emmie!" I explained (again) that Emmie is her baby sister. I then told her for the first time that Emmie was in my belly. Lucy refused to believe that. I informed her that she had also once lived in my belly. She refused to believe that, too. I don't blame her. It's weird. Lucy doesn't get the baby sister idea yet, but we're working on it. I bought a baby figure for her Little People house. We already had baby gear (high chair, changing table, cradle, stroller) but not a baby. We've started playing baby and big sister with her Little People. She loves putting the baby on the changing table to pretend to change the baby's diaper. I'm hoping that we can provide enough story lines about babies that will become familiar to her so that when a baby comes home she'll have an idea of what's supposed to happen. She hadn't really experienced snow before, but when it snowed a couple weeks ago, she immediately made and threw a snowball. She knew what to do in the snow because of Curious George and Shaun the Sheep. I'm hoping we can do the same sort of thing by playing scenarios that will tell her what to do with a baby. We'll see how it goes.
Lucy is also showing new skills nearly every day. She adds a couple of words a day to her vocabulary. Yesterday she looked at her wrinkled fingers in the pool and said, "Mama, me pruney." I probably should have taught her the word wrinkled first, but it works. She is learning more verbs and making more sentences. She still refuses to say her name. The other day I asked her what her name is, and she said, "Me." Well, yes, me is "a name I call myself" according to The Sound of Music. She is starting to build with Duplo blocks all by herself. I typically join her and add to the complexity of the sheep house that she's building. That's what she always builds. She attaches the rooms to the Duplo table and adds other blocks and puts people and animals inside. She has also gotten into playing with the Little People House and her magnetic doll house. She "measures" everything with her measuring tape. She still recognizes letters and numbers. The other day she was scribbling on a chalkboard and suddenly stopped and pointed to some of the marks she had made and told me it was a Y. She was right. She didn't make a Y on purpose, but she recognized she had done it.
She is making progress on showing self-control and patience, even though she's still independent, strong-willed, and two. She tends to help clean up her toys, sometimes without prompting. Every once in a while, she'll refuse to help for a few minutes and sometimes pitch a little fit, but when asked again later, she'll eagerly jump up and help. If we could just fix that occasional pitch-a-fit stage, she'd be pretty well behaved. She's still energetic and doesn't sit still for long, which some people would consider being poorly behaved, but I'm OK with her need to go and do and move at this point as long as she isn't hurting anything or anyone and is making progress in controlling herself. She doesn't tend to hurt, and she is making progress, so I can be somewhat content with that for now.
Since Lucy is getting so big (and our lives are about to get more complicated), we've been working with Lucy on a couple of life skills. Getting Lucy to sleep has always been a problem. Since I'm expecting to live in a recliner for a couple of months after another C-section, we needed to get Lucy to a point where she could get to sleep without my lying next to her. We have succeeded! Matt and I both go to her room with her for bedtime. I sit in the recliner, and Matt sits next to her mattress on the floor. We read books until she gets tired. I offer hugs and kisses, and she grabs her water bottle (her comfort item) and lies down on her mattresses and falls asleep. Some nights are better than others, but she's doing really well. A couple of nights she has needed more human contact to fall asleep, so she has cuddled up to Matt on the floor and fallen asleep. That's fine with us. She even gets into bed herself on Thursday nights when Matt is at game night. It's pretty fantastic. The freedom makes me a little giddy. I tend to fall asleep in the recliner, sometimes before she's asleep.
The other training we are doing is potty training. We haven't pushed her. We've just kept talking up life without diapers and giving her opportunities to sit on her Elmo potty seat. The training has been stalled for a while. She was willing to sit but almost never peed in the toilet. Yesterday she started refusing to even sit on her Elmo seat. I was OK with stalled but not OK with regression. So today I stripped her naked from the waist down and made her stay on a vinyl table cloth in the dining room for a couple hours. We played together, building sheep houses, and we ate snacks. She didn't like being confined to the table cloth, but she stayed fairly well. She peed on the table cloth twice and was horrified both times. The first time we dried the table cloth with a towel, and I took her to sit on the toilet and reminded her that she should let me know if she needs to pee so that she can do it on the toilet or on a potty seat (two of which were on the table cloth with her). The second time she peed, she immediately jumped up and said, "Mama, pee! Agh!" We dried it and sat her on the toilet, and she peed on the toilet! She had stopped herself when she realized she was peeing and finished on the toilet! She was praised lavishly and given a sticker to put on her shirt. She stayed diaperless until Matt got home from work (the deadline I had given her). Then she got to wear a diaper again. I thought we could do that every day for a while and gradually increase the amount of time she spends without a diaper. Today was successful. I hope this method continues to work for her. I don't have a time table for potty training her. I'm just glad to be making progress again. I just ordered a huge supply of her size of Elmo diapers (Pampers) from Amazon, so we're ready for however long it takes her. And if she doesn't use them all, we'll save them for Emmie.
Speaking of Emmie, she is quite a kicker. I told Matt that I think she's gone from wiggling and fluttering to full-blown kicking faster than her siblings did. And boy can she kick! Yesterday, she kicked me hard enough to knock my hand off my belly. She was also doing somersaults, which feels like my organs went on a roller coaster without the rest of me. She appreciates it when I rest and when I eat, but I haven't noticed any other preferences yet.
I've been talking to Emmie, typically saying, "Hi, Emmie," when she kicks. Yesterday Lucy said, "No Emmie!" I explained (again) that Emmie is her baby sister. I then told her for the first time that Emmie was in my belly. Lucy refused to believe that. I informed her that she had also once lived in my belly. She refused to believe that, too. I don't blame her. It's weird. Lucy doesn't get the baby sister idea yet, but we're working on it. I bought a baby figure for her Little People house. We already had baby gear (high chair, changing table, cradle, stroller) but not a baby. We've started playing baby and big sister with her Little People. She loves putting the baby on the changing table to pretend to change the baby's diaper. I'm hoping that we can provide enough story lines about babies that will become familiar to her so that when a baby comes home she'll have an idea of what's supposed to happen. She hadn't really experienced snow before, but when it snowed a couple weeks ago, she immediately made and threw a snowball. She knew what to do in the snow because of Curious George and Shaun the Sheep. I'm hoping we can do the same sort of thing by playing scenarios that will tell her what to do with a baby. We'll see how it goes.
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