I’m 21 weeks and 2 days pregnant today! More than halfway there. Baby Girl Friedman has been kicking, jumping, and rolling all over the place. At our ultrasound she was head down, but she must have turned again because most of the jabs I get are sucker punches straight to my bladder. She’s pretty active, especially at night. I love that I can feel her move, but truth be told, it can get a little annoying to feel those lighter pokes over and over again – it’s almost like being tickled from the inside.

I forgot to post this story from a few weeks ago: I had gone to Toys’R'Us one morning after dropping Anya off at daycare, hoping to find very low chairs to go with a table I had just built for her big girl room. I got there a few minutes before the store opened and was waiting outside the doors when a woman joined me. We stood there silently for a few moments, and then she turned to me and said, “You must be due any day now.” Shocked, I looked down at my belly and replied, “No, I’m actually not due until December.” She became very flustered (which I secretly enjoyed) and said, “Oh…well…uh…you’ve really popped!” I said something about how I showed early with my first pregnancy, too, and the conversation ended there.

Now, I know I carried very far forward with Anya and always looked farther along in the pregnancy than I was, and yes, it seems that I will be repeating that experience with this baby, but come on! I was 18 or 19 weeks along, and if that lady thought I looked nine months pregnant then, how big am I going to be when I’m actually nine months?!? Then again, she probably wasn’t the brightest light bulb of the bunch. I don’t think I look nine months pregnant yet, do you?

See even more belly pictures here!

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Tonight as I was putting Anya to bed, she asked, “Baby can hear it?” when I turned the CD player on for her bedtime songs.  I said sure, we could let baby hear the music, too, and I moved my shirt off my belly for her.  Anya put her head down on my stomach, said, “Okay, baby.  Listen!” and then started to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” (trying her hardest to sing along with the music, something I never noticed her do before).  It was such a sweet, tender moment, and it was hard not to get choked up.  I hope very much that she will care for her little sister as much as she does now when she is actually here.

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Last Friday we took Anya to the dentist to the first time.  Knowing how she feels about going to the pediatrician, we did our best to prep her for the dentist.  We talked about it for a whole week and I took a book out of the library about the dentist (and then decided that book was useless and bought her a book about Dora going to the dentist instead).  She loved hanging out in the waiting room:

Once we were called in, she started to get a little clingy and didn’t want to sit in the chair by herself.  She eventually agreed to sit in Lex’s lap and had fun admiring everything in the room (especially the TV).  I thought maybe the visit was going to go smoothly after all, and then the dentist came into the room.  To her credit, the dentist was wonderful with Anya.  I’m not quite sure how she managed to think straight, let alone get Anya’s teeth examined, cleaned, and treated with fluoride, given how loud Anya screamed.  The dentist had Lex put Anya’s head in her lap while he held her body on his.   When the dentist was done, I held Anya while she calmed down as the dentist gave some follow-up information to Lex.  The assistant came in with a new toothbrush and a Dora sticker for Anya, and suddenly the dentist’s office was a pretty awesome place to be.  THEN they let her pick out a PRIZE!  Two bracelets!  Oh boy!  If you ask Anya now, going to the dentist was great and she loved it.  She still wants us to read her the Dora book several times a day.  I guess we’ve got about 6 months to get her ready for the next visit.

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Tantrums and fits of crying are on the rise here – not surprising, as Anya nears her second birthday.  We’re trying to use a lot of the techniques you might read about when approaching these kinds of behaviors, including reflecting what we see and labeling emotions.  Tonight when I was helping Anya brush her teeth she got pretty upset because when she wouldn’t cooperate I made her lie down on my lap.  She kept fighting me while screaming, “Sit up!  SIT UP!”  When I finished, she was still crying, so I said to her, “You didn’t like it when I made you lie down.  You were mad at me!  Mad mad mad!”  She calmed down and we talked a little about how if she doesn’t open her mouth, I can’t brush her teeth, and then she can’t have a turn to do it herself like a big girl, blah blah blah.

Later, as I was putting her to bed, we went through our usual back and forth about how many books I was going to read (because if she had it her way, I’d read every book she owns – TWICE).  When I said that we were not going to read But Not the Hippopatomus because we’d already read two books and that it was time for her goodnight songs, she started to cry and tried to grab the book.  I told her she could go into the crib right now instead of music, so she yelled, “NO!” and sat back down but continued to cry.  Then she turns to me and says, “I crying.  I MAD!  Anya’s mad!” 

OHHHHHH, so hard not to laugh!

It’s good to know that she listens, though, and I was then able to go through the whole “You wanted to read another book and I said no, so that made you mad, that made you angry” thing.  She did finally go to bed easily and without tears after one more quick run to the bathroom.

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Anya sang this song non-stop for about 15 minutes before I got out my camera and another 10 minutes after I turned it off. Everyone was here today, including all of the characters from her Where’s Mommy book, Elmo, Ernie, Baby, Anya, Mommy, Daddy, and her classmates and teachers from day care.

Anya tends to sing a lot of different songs throughout the day, but what made this one amusing/exciting to both me and Lex is that we had never heard it before! She must have learned it at day care, probably as part of circle time.

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It’s been pretty hot here this past week.  Rather than venturing out to the pool or beach, we stayed close to home this weekend.  We took advantage of some new toys (many recently acquired from craigslist and Freecycle) and enjoyed our time together.

Anya liked moving the water from her pool to the water table:

Then we trekked up the hill:

Swinging:

Playing on the slides:

Anya tries to ride her new (used) toy:

It was a little small for her.  She ultimately decided this was easier:

(Savanna is the little girl who lives a few houses down from us.  Diesel is her dog.)

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Tonight while I was sitting with Anya during her pre-bath potty time, she kept trying to grab my face, something I did not want her to do.  After several failed attempts despite warnings that I did not want her to, she caught me, and as I was about to give her a firm “No!” she said, “You’re so pretty, Mommy!”  I cracked up, which of course made her repeat it, which of course fueled my laughter even more.  Then she said it about 100 times more, running her fingers through my hair each time.  By the end, there definitely wasn’t anything pretty about me – I probably resembled Cousin Itt more than myself!

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Anya is 21 months old today! I’m not going to post a complete update since I wrote one fairly recently. Here’s just a few things I’ve noticed:

Potty – There has been a definite increase in the frequency with which Anya tells me she needs to go to the bathroom just to pee, and sometimes when we get there, we discover she had a dry diaper! However, she’s had at least four or five poop accidents in the last two months, all of which occurred at playdates. I figure she was having so much fun that she didn’t want to stop to go to the bathroom.

Books – Anya has been able (and eager) to sit for longer stories these days. We don’t let her have free access to her paper books because she’s a little to rough with the pages, but at naptime and bedtime, she only wants one of the big books from her shelf instead of her baby board books. Some of her current favorites are If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss, and Good-bye Mommy by Bruce King Doman (the last one is an old book that belonged to me when I was little). Anya can be cute when she’s being read to – she often has a comment to make about the pictures, and I enjoy when she does because it shows that she’s really paying attention. On the other hand, she’s been a bit of a pain in the tush at bedtime lately because once we’re finished she wants to hold every book herself, shouting, “I read it!”

Naps – Naptime has been a little frustrating for all of us here. Well, it’s really post-naptime that is the problem. Regardless of whether she goes down at 12:30 or 2:30 and whether she naps for 45 minutes or 2 1/2 hours, Anya tends to wake up in a miserable mood. Screaming, crying, whining…it generally lasts for 30 to 60 minutes until she snaps out of it, and it’s very difficult to get her past it. She absolutely still needs the nap (yesterday afternoon she fell asleep in her carseat before I even started driving!). If anyone out there has advice, we’d love to hear it!

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I’m 19 weeks along now, and we noticed yesterday that we can see my stomach pop out a bit when the baby kicks! It’s very cool. What was a little bizarre was when we observed that my belly button does this weird in and out thing with some of the baby’s movements. If only Anya hadn’t stretched my stomach out beyond repair!

On a completely unrelated note, I’ve been having a bit of a run-in with Anya over the past few days. She has decided that it is funny to lick me. I have countered with the opinion that this is, in fact, GROSS, but she’s still going with funny. I’m not sure what inspired her to do it the first few times, but now she’s totally doing it for the reaction (and I have to admit I have been reacting). Ignoring her would probably stop the behavior after a little while since there’d be no reaction to reinforce the licking, but I’m not sure ignoring it is the way to go in this case. It really is quite disgusting, and I would like her to stop immediately, not after several times of licking me without getting a response. She’ll apologize after I firmly tell her “no licking” and start walking away from her, and she’ll tell me she’s not supposed to lick, but then she does it again anyway. She doesn’t do it to Lex, just me. Aren’t I lucky?

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