Gracie to the Goo

Grace only has 4 more weeks as an only child! Talk about craziness.

For a long time I was really nervous about introducing her to a new baby. Over the past couple weeks she's eased those worries for me a little bit. She's been excelling at all things independent and has been a lot less clingy.

I think she'll still have a hard time in some ways, but she's been so happy about everything Baby Brother lately that I think she'll also do really well.

Today we had a pretty long conversation about what we'll do with Baby Brother when he comes home. I explained that he's going to come out of my tummy and then we'll bring him home from the doctor (she doesn't understand what 'hospital' means). Her eyes got all wide and then for the rest of the afternoon she kept saying things like "Baby Brudda come home doctor, Mommy! Doctor Baby Brudda, Mommy!"

We set up Baby's corner in Mom and Dad's room last weekend, which pretty much is just the pack-n-play with the tiny bassinet and changing table connected to it. Then we also have all of his tiny clothes, nursing things, baby toys, and other miscellaneous baby things set up on our bigger changing table next to that. That's the extent of a "nursery" for him for the time being! When we buy a house I plan on setting up a cute themed nursery for him. For now a corner with his couple pieces of furniture will suffice, ha ha.

We also put the baby bouncer out in the living room.

Grace has been SOOO excited since we set up all of these things. She'll go through his toys, play with his binkies, she'll threaten to undo all of the nicely folded tiny baby clothes (but I quickly stop her....pregnant lady problems.....too tired to refold clothes....jk I NEVER like refolding clothes! Ha ha)

She's been hitting a growth spurt I think, because she is nearly out of shoes that fit her. She particularly needs new church shoes. We went out the other day to find some cute white church shoes and we ended up at Burlington. I always have to go through the baby things no matter what store I go to, and this time we ended up getting Baby a little toy.

While we were looking through the toys I gave Grace the option to pick one of two things to get him.

Lately whenever I give Grace the option between two things she'll say to me: "One, two, Mommy! I want two, MOMMY!" (So many sentences ending in "MOMMY!!") She wants both....never just one, ha ha ha. This pretty much goes for any option, even sometimes options that she doesn't necessarily like.

Speaking of "one, two" she's getting pretty good at counting. She can at least count to four no problem. I haven't really tested her on it too much. She'll get shy sometimes and doesn't like to perform, so I try not to pressure her into doing it. Today while I was counting out loud she yelled "six!" right as I said six, so I'm guessing she knows up to ten pretty well?

Back to the toy story....

We finally picked ONE to take home and she was very happy about it. She loves new toys. Later as we were showing Daddy what we bought that day when he got home from work she asked me to open the toy. I opened it and told her she could play with it as long as she put it away in Baby Brother's bed when she was done.

She gets a very concentrated look on her face when she's getting instructions and is actually listening, so I figured she'd at least try to remember to follow through on what I was saying.

I went about the rest of the night forgetting I had said that. We put her to bed and later on a couple hours after she was asleep I went into my room to find the new toy and a couple binkies sitting in Baby Brother's bed! I went and asked Jeff if he did it and he said "no, Grace remembered you asked her to, so she did!"

My mommy pride swelled at that moment.

She's such a good girl.

I know that'd be a easy thing for a mom to expect of a little bit older child....but a two year old? She amazes me all the time.

Something else cute that I wanted to document about her, is that she's been labeling emotions a lot lately.

The other day we were laying on my bed and I was letting her play with some old jewelry of mine that I had found. One of the pieces was a ring that has two birds touching beaks. I told her: "They're kissing like mommy and daddy!" She then said: "Yeah, mommy and daddy birds! Happy!" I thought it was so cute how she said they were happy. And that she came to that conclusion all on her own.

We were drawing with chalk outside today and she told me she was going to draw Daddy and that "Daddy happy, Mom." Ha ha ha ha.

I love that girl.

She pays so much attention to details.

Also while drawing chalk outside she wanted to draw a dog from the Puppy Movie (The Secret Life of Pets). I talked her through it....I'd say "Okay, draw the head." And she actually drew an oval/circle! Then I said "now do the eyes" and she did a bunch of scribbles. Same for the ears. When I said to draw the mouth, she did a straight line across the head. And the tail she also did a straight line just under the "head". I thought it was pretty good for her age and skill level! She's definitely watched me draw things a couple times.

Ta da! Totally looks like a puppy, right? Ha ha ha. She was very intentional about it, I'm sure you'd see puppy if you were actually there to witness the step by step process. :)

I'll finish this post with a couple random pictures of our life lately. I'm always in awe of what a great life we have. We have so much to be grateful for. I'm glad I can have this sweet little family and learn from them everyday.

At the cabin a couple weeks ago. Just hanging out with Baby Brother and her favorite blankie!

Playing with cousins at a reunion!

Standing on Mommy is a favorite pass time

Swimming with Daddy! Jeff's eye is looking great, huh? Ha ha. Poor guy. :(

Too Many Doctors, Too Little Time

What a crazy week and a half we've had!

Last week Jeff's brother's family were here from Virginia and Jeff took the whole week off so we could go to the cabin and just spend time together as a family.

He literally hadn't taken a single day off since he started his job in January. So all through the busy season and long hours he's been working like crazy for months, and finally took a week off now that things have slowed down in the summer.

We went up to the cabin Tuesday night and then Jeff, his brother, and our brother-in-law went golfing Wednesday morning.

That morning Grace and I woke up and went upstairs to everyone else to find out that Jeff been hit in the eye with a golfball! I immediately went and called him, but they were just getting back and Jeff came and found me. I couldn't help myself, I immediately started crying when I saw him. I didn't know what else to do.

Poor guy. :( It looked so bad! His face was SO swollen and bruising really fast.

He was in a lot of pain, which made sense later when we found out that he had 4 broken (actually shattered) bones in his face. Oh my goodness, I felt so bad.

We went to the emergency room in Heber City and it was kinda funny, cause I walked in first and they started to say "how can I help you?" when Jeff came in right behind me and they panicked saying "Oh! Okay, right this way!" Ha ha.

He went and got a CT scan and it came back to say that he had the four badly broken bones in his face. They were going to transfer him to a different hospital that day to do surgery, but the plastic surgeon at the U thought that it'd be better to wait 4-5 days for the swelling to go down before doing anything like cutting his face open, so we ended up just going to an eye doctor to make sure his vision was okay.

We are SO lucky the ball didn't hit even a centimeter different, because he very easily could have gone blind.

So for those wondering how this actually happened, like I said Jeff was golfing. He was in the golf cart about 15 feet in front of his brother, but also about 25 feet off to the side. He thought he'd be okay that far away, especially if he ducked down in the golf cart a little bit, which is what he did. His brother ended up hitting the ball exactly sideways instead of forward and it literally went right between the metal pole of the golf cart and the golf clubs sitting in the cart RIGHT where Jeff's ducked down face was!

Like seriously, it was just a huge accident that never could ever be duplicated.

Right after it happened

In the ER

Gross redness! Ha ha. The pictures don't really do it justice for how swollen it got.

Even for being in an extreme amount of pain (can you imagine having that many broken bones in such a sensitive place like your face?) Jeff's kept such a positive attitude. He's joked with his family about it and been way more positive than I think most anyone would be.

He'll always just say "well, I can't do anything to change it, so why react any other way?"

He's handled the pain and everything really well.

So we stayed the week up at the cabin and Jeff pretty much just rested with ice on his face the whole time. I told him we could go home, but he's the nicest dad and wanted Grace to be able to stay and play with cousins at the cabin, so that's what we did. He kept saying that resting at home vs. at the cabin was the same to him, so he'd rather Grace have fun.

He's such a good daddy.

On Monday we went to the U to meet with the plastic surgeon and he for sure wanted to do surgery. He even was like "This happened on Wednesday? Why didn't we do this sooner?!" ..........uh....cause you said to let the swelling go down? Ha ha ha

Jeff then had surgery on Tuesday and the doctor popped his bones back into place. He made a small incision in his hair and tubed an instrument down inside his face to pop the bones back where they needed to be.

Doesn't that just make you feel all weird inside?

Just imagining an instrument swimming behind your face.

Ew.

Ha ha ha ha ha...

Let's get that visual out of our heads.

So the rest of this week he's just been home recovering. He was hoping to go back to work yesterday, but he's still in too much pain and just overall doesn't feel good. I don't blame him one bit! He's said that the pain post surgery actually hurts more than the couple of days last week right after the bones broke.

Ugh. I feel so bad for him.

We just have the worst luck with medical things it seems like.

We can't stay away from emergency rooms for some reason!

I've never really thought of us as weird sickly people who are always running to the ER...but for some strange reason we end up there more often than a lot of people we know!

I think we've been to the ER a total of 5 times now in our marriage.

And we've only been married 5 1/2 years! Ha ha ha....

Oh man.

I guess it just makes us that much more grateful for our health when it's good.

And honestly, most of the time it's very good. We definitely take care of ourselves, especially with having a chronic illness like I do....my whole life IS taking care of myself!

Speaking of that chronic illness.....

Sometimes I seriously take for granted how much Jeff knows, understands, and takes care of my diabetes.

I'm a part of several Type 1 groups on Facebook (have I said that before? Oh yeah, like a million times, ha ha) and I see SO many differing lives of how people are living with this disease. I've seen posts before about women needing advice because their significant other could care less about their diabetes. I've seen people who are looking for help because they are recently separated from their spouse and they are afraid of what might happen if their blood sugar goes too low in the middle of the night and no one is there to help them.

I've seen lots of posts pertaining to how spouses/significant others are either very much a part of the diabetes side of people's lives....or how they aren't.

I am SO fortunate to say that Jeff is my biggest advocate.

He's my biggest supporter.

He knows almost as much about my diabetes as I do, and that's saying something!

He understands what numbers are good, which ones are bad. If I eat a certain thing what my sugar will look like in a couple hours.

Some times I call him the blood police, because he's more on top of what I need to be doing than I am, ha ha ha.

The highs and lows of my blood sugar can be just as frustrating for him as they are for me, and really that says everything about how much he cares about me. If he didn't care he would never ask me about it or check in on me.

He knows the ins and outs of Type 1 Diabetes and how demanding it is.

I'm really lucky that he cares to know so much about it. It has really helped me to stay as healthy as I am.

I've been worried that the baby will come too early, purely because that's a thing with diabetes and pregnancy and Jeff's constantly the one who is saying he doesn't think that's the case. Or he doesn't think the baby will be big because of my diabetes. He's always so calm and reassuring about it.

Lastly, I just wanted to say how much Grace loves Jeff. Whenever he's home she's always concerned about what he's doing. She has to know exactly what Daddy is up to.

This morning I had a couple doctors appointments (yes, a couple...cause going to just one would be normal, ha ha) and Jeff stayed home with Grace. When I told her he was staying home with her she got SO excited and started chanting "HIDE N SEEK DADDY! HIDE N SEEK DADDY! HIDE N SEEK DADDY!!!!"

Right before I left I found them playing in her castle tent in her room. They were laying with some pillows and Grace was blabbering some story to him as I told them goodbye.

She loves that daddy of hers. She'll hug and kiss him way more often than she will anyone else. She loves cuddling up with him to watch movies.

Whenever we see anything that remotely has to do with sports she'll happily say "Daddy play that? Daddy soccer ball? Daddy soft ball?"

I'm excited to see Jeff with our little boy! It'll be fun watching him learn everything there is to know from his daddy.

We are lucky to have a husband, father, and best friend like Jeff. I love him so much!

All Over the Place Update

I haven't done an update on us lately, and I felt like I should!

I'll first talk about Grace, cause she's just hilarious and needs to be documented.

She's talking SOOO much.

She just blabbers and rattles on about who knows what ALL the time! She's constantly talking! The other night at dinner she was telling a story that we couldn't understand and Jeff just said... "I have a feeling when those sentences become intelligible we'll never be able to get her to stop!" Ha ha ha ha ha ha. I'm thinking he's right.

She's a little parrot. She repeats everything we say! I love it, cause I know it's her way of learning.

Being with her all day, she ends most of her sentences with "Mommy?"

"I go this way, Mommy?"

"I play my room, Mommy?"

"Clean up, Mommy?"

"Daddy come home, Mommy?"

"We go Grandma's house, Mommy?"

"I go water, Mommy? I play water, MOMMY!!!"

Earlier today she completely out of the blue said: "Fireworks, Mommy?"

I said: "Yeah, did we watch fireworks the other day?"

A lot of times when she brings something up, she's referring to a memory of it. She likes talking about things that have already happened, so many times I know instead of taking it as 'oh, she wants to go see fireworks/she's asking for fireworks', I know she's actually just referring to a memory.

She then responded with: "Yeah, Grandma's house.....Grandma. And Liza. ........Liza....eyes."

It took me a minute, but I realized she was talking about how Liza was scared of the fireworks and laid on Grandma with her eyes closed! Ha ha.

I thought it was so cute how she remembered all of that.

She's a sweet girl.

She says "thank you/thanks" and "please" all the time without being prompted to now.

She'll say "thanks, Mom." to the simplest and cutest things.

The other day I was chasing her (she LOVES being chased or to play hide and seek) and if I got close to her I'd kind of tickle or poke her. One of the times I accidentally poked her a little harder than normal and she said "ow, my back!". I apologized to her and then gave her a hug and kiss. She smiled and said "thanks, Mom."

It was so cute to me that she said thanks for me apologizing, ha ha.

She's a smart girl. Just being around her for a little bit people can tell that she knows a lot!

Sometimes she's almost too smart. She's quickly turning into a manipulator, which is very common for her age....but still....it's hard!

I'm a huge believer in follow through, so a lot times Grace and I will butt heads, cause I won't give in.

I could probably write a whole long blog about follow through...........

How important it is...

How parents now-a-days don't do it near enough!

But ya know....if you read this blog regularly you already get enough of my soap box....so we'll just move on. :) Ha ha ha

Other news for our family...

We got a new car this week!!

It's soooooo nice!

Like....sometimes I feel unworthy driving it kind of nice.

We've always just had small older cars that always seem to have problems, especially mine. My old car should have died a fiery death years ago. Somehow I managed to keep it going for 7 years though! Kind of a miracle.

So to have a really nice car now is such a treat for us!

It's a 2012 Hyundai Santa Fe.

So it's not BRAND new....but seriously....4 years old......totally like new.

It's in perfect shape and is just shiny and beautiful, ha ha.

I love it.

Grace loves it too!

"I go white car, Mommy! I go new white car.....MOMMY!...I go!"

Basically she wants to go way more than ever before....and before was already enough going, ha ha.

Other life things....

We've pretty much decided to wait till after the baby is born to really seriously consider buying a house.

A couple weeks ago (maybe even a month ago? ....this summer is flying by) we put in offers on two houses. I think that makes our offer total up to 4 now? 5?

Who knows...

And neither of those worked out.

At this point if we did get an offer accepted we'd be moving in right when I'll be having the baby....and that sounds like no fun!

Especially since I'm sort of, not really, but kind of a control freak and I don't think I could handle just letting a big thing like a move be thrown into other people's hands.

Ha ha ha....

Maybe I'm dumb....but I like things the way I like them.

Speaking of having a baby....

That's going to be a thing pretty soon!

Oh my goodness......

I'm so much more stressed about all of it than I ever was with Grace.

Maybe I was just naive and uneducated with Grace and just trusted that everything would go how it was supposed to?

OR maybe I have Type 1 Diabetes now and my whole life is that much more risky?

Probably both of those things.

I'm a part of a couple type 1 and pregnancy groups on Facebook and they are WONDERFUL, huge amounts of help/reassurance/assistance, a place where I feel safe to go ask questions.....

BUT....they also cause me some grief.

I'm constantly seeing women on there who are suffering from diabetes complications during pregnancy....are delivering way sooner than anyone ever wants to....tons of little babies going to NICU's for whatever reasons....

The reality of it all is a lot to handle sometimes.

Looking at all of these women's stories and how many of them delivered their babies around 34...35 weeks. That's only a couple weeks away for me!

I think the advantages of those groups definitely out weigh the stress though. They are groups of women who actually really understand what I go through every single day. They 100% get it. There's absolutely no judgement by any of them and they are all very supportive, because they deal with the same things.

It helps me a lot to know I'm not alone in that aspect, especially when I'm having a hard diabetes day.

Like today!

Some days just weigh you down. I woke up from a horrible night of blood sugars and have had a hard time recovering from it today.

I'm usually so positive! Like 99% of the time I'm very positive and upbeat about living with this disease.

People ask me about it and I just can't bring myself to be a huge downer about it, although I have every right to be, truthfully.

It's my whole life. And it's an exhausting life!

I sincerely have the hardest time telling people about my struggles. Maybe I don't want them to feel uncomfortable or feel bad for me. Maybe I know I'm not articulate enough to really explain it all. Whatever it is....I'm the queen of telling people I'm doing good and like I said 99% of the time my positive attitude keeps me there.

So maybe I deserve to have a day every now and then to wallow in self pity? Ha ha ha.....

Especially when my blood is sooooooooooooooo dumb.

My insulin needs have been going up and up and up, which is totally normal for pregnant diabetics.

It's probably normal for pregnant anyones....but all of you normal functioning people just have bodies that tell yourselves to give you more insulin naturally.

Having to up and up and up my insulin all the time is draining. Nobody wants to feel like they have to keep giving them self more and more and more medicine just to function.

We've been cleaning out our apartment and getting everything set up for Baby Brother, as we call him. I've been washing all of his clothes today! We got all of our baby stuff out of storage last night. The past couple weeks we've been rearranging things so our changing table and pack n play can be set up next to our bed.

I think Grace is slowly understanding the whole Baby Brother thing. We talk about him all the time. She knows where he's located - Mommy's tummy. She loves going through all the baby things that will be his. She likes carrying around articles of clothing that will be his. We pray for him every night and when Grace says prayers we have her pray for him too.

"Heavly Fader, peese bess Baby Brudder"

She has the cutest voice when she prays.

Something we've been trying to do lately is family home evening.

My family never really did family home evening growing up, but I've always thought it's a really important thing to do! I finally feel like Grace is at an age where she'd actually listen to a lesson a little bit....so we started doing one once a week about a month ago.

Grace gets SO into it, it's really cute! She very intently listens when we're giving the lesson, you can tell she's trying to understand it all.

This week I did a lesson on things that make us happy and sad. I talked about how Heavenly Father wants us all to be happy and that's why we are here on this earth to learn and have joy!

We made a list of things that make us happy and sad. Grace didn't really want to offer a lot of input....she was being pretty shy about it...but at one point  Jeff said: "I know what makes Grace happy...Grandma and Grandpa!" (it's true, she does love all 6 of her grandma/grandpas) Grace immediately smiled and said: "Ajojos!?!?!?" So we put Josie on her list of what makes her happy, ha ha.

On the sad list Jeff put that Grace crying makes him sad, so now whenever anyone says the word "sad" Grace will say: "Daddy....sad Grace cry!" I think for some reason that made her happy to know that her crying makes Daddy sad, ha ha.

She's a diva, but in the cutest way. Ha ha

To end I'll post some recent pictures of us!

7 more weeks till Baby Brother's deadline! Until then I'll be at the hospital 3 or so times a week to make sure he's looking happy and healthy!

 Selfie time!

Camping with Ajojos. She really does make Grace very happy! 

 Love this guy!

Grace's birthday party was Winnie the Pooh themed per her request! I made these pom poms. They were really fun to make! 

 She was SOOOO happy about all of her presents! Our family really knows her,  cause she got toys from every show she loves! Haha :)

 I had big plans for this cake.  It ended up like this! Hahahaha. I guess that's what happens when you run out of time.  It's still cute though! And it turned everyone's mouths green and blue.....so I guess that was cool and unexpected too!

 Blowing out her candles like a pro! I can't believe she's 2!

More of my decorations,  including Piglet Punch and Tigger Tails! Almost every day since that day she's asked if she can have another Pooh Party. (This was 2 weeks ago,  haha) "I go Pooh Party, Mommy? Cake?"

 Grace got this pool from me and Jeff for her birthday and LOVES it. "I play new water toy, Mommy! New water...TOY!"

My sister is moved all the way to Washington DC now! This was the week before she left we went down to City Creek for the day. We're going to miss that girl, or as Grace would say "MY Chelsea!"

Stop Dad!

Jeff just called us during his lunch break. He was on speaker phone and Grace came over to the phone and said "Stop Dad!". He asked her what he needed to stop and she replied "Stop work!!"

Hahahaha.

I feel the same way,  Gracie Goo. I want Daddy to come home too.

That little bub is going to be 2 whole years old in just under 2 weeks.  Serious craziness!

She's growing up in so many ways.

Some things she loves right now:
-Playing with cousins
-Dance parties
-Splash pads and playing in water
-Bossing people around
-Saying hi and waving to strangers,  but it's usually too small and quiet for them to realize she's doing it
-Running!
-Her new Elsa flip flops
-Getting everyone's shoes for them before we leave
-Markers
-Any and all animals
-Requesting songs for Mom to sing
-Playing "hiding" on Mom and Dad's bed
-Doing actions to songs, including trying to copy the ABC'S in sign language. She tries really hard to do P, V, and Z.

I was getting our family home evening lesson ready for this week and I decided to do it on families.  I am printing off pictures of our families and I'm going to have Grace match them with who they go with. For example,  we'll have her match which Grandma goes with which Grandpa, or which cousin goes with which aunt and uncle.

As I was finding these pictures I was so struck by the fact that Grace has SOOOO many people in her life that love and care about her.

Just looking at our parents,  siblings,  and nieces and nephews (so Grace's most immediate grandparents,  aunts,  uncles,  and cousins) there are 33 people total!

In our most immediate families...33 people!

We are so lucky to have so many people that care about us.

It's blaringly obvious that Grace loves playing with her cousins. She knows all of their names and gets excited when we talk about them.

I've also enjoyed seeing how she loves her grandparents.

I had a very special relationship with my grandma and grandpa growing up. They were always there for anything I had going on in my life.  They went on family vacations with us everywhere. They were, and still are, very special people to me.

I love seeing Grace gravitate to all of her grandparents when we're around them.  She'd much rather be with them over anyone else!

"Those things which provide deep and lasting happiness and gratitude are the things which money cannot buy: our families,  the gospel,  good friends, our health,  our abilities,  the love we receive from those around us."
-President Thomas S. Monson

I read that quote yesterday and it really hit me how fortunate I am and how fortunate my family is.

Getting started in a career, trying to find a house to buy, and all the other things that come with our current stage of life leaves us feeling like we need all the money in the world to do the things we want to do.

Even though we've only been married for 5 years,  we have jumped through so many hoops and climbed so many mountains to get where we are now. We have gone through the newlywed poorer than poor stage.

I'm still learning that we have a lot more hoops and mountains to figure out though. And that seriously at the end of it all money should be the last thing on the list.

I'm grateful for all of those things that President Monson put on his list.  Yes,  even (or maybe especially) my health.

Without all of those important things I wouldn't have anything to look forward to! And I definitely have a lot to look forward to.  :)

Baby Brother is getting closer!

I'm officially 27 weeks pregnant!

It's FINALLY starting to feel like I might make it out of this pregnancy at some point,  haha.

To know that my baby could survive if he was born now is a crazy thought.

At my growth scan with maternal fetal medicine on Tuesday he was measuring perfectly average still.  Hooray! Average is such a great word in a diabetic's world! Hahaha.

He's 1 pound 13 ounces and measuring perfect at the right amount of weeks gestation in all ways.

This little guy definitely moves A LOT more than his big sister did. He's almost always on the move.

Sometimes he'll make big enough movements that my stomach will lurch or visually move all over the place and it cracks me up.

He's an active little boy!

His cousin that will be almost his same age was born about 3 weeks ago.  It's kind of like deja vu, cause this was our life 2 years ago when Zach was born.

After Zach,  a couple months later came Eliza,  and a month after that came our Gracie Goo.

This time little Declan has now been born,  then Eliza's little sister will be born in a couple months,  followed a month later by Baby Brother.

It makes it seem SO much closer now that Declan is here.

I asked Jeff last night to give me a time frame on when he'll decide on a name for Baby Brother.

He told me August 25th (that's the day I'll be induced if I don't go earlier). I just rolled my eyes,  cause seriously.....I just want to know what I can call my baby!

We have a list of maybe 3-4 names. Some I like more than others.  It's kind of a matter of Jeff just deciding which one he likes one.

He's very traditional with names. He'll never pick a name that's even kind of out of the ordinary. So even narrowing a list down to 3 or 4 names was a pretty big feat.

I mean,  really,  how more traditional can you get than "Grace"? That's about as old school typical as they come! Hahaha

I love Gracie Goo's name though. Grace was definitely my top girl name I wanted!

We'll figure out our boy's name eventually.  Just probably not in the timing I'd like.

As the pregnancy nears the third trimester the insulin resistance is getting ridiculous.

Insulin resistance means my body is needing more and more insulin all the time due to all the changes mostly hormonally with pregnancy.

The fact that this is happening has had me in tears many days this week.

Having high blood sugar is so frustrating and makes me so nervous and stressed out.  And stress doesn't really help,  cause that usually increases blood sugar.

I've been correcting and correcting,  which means lots more needles,  and sometimes it doesn't help.

I just have to keep telling myself that it'll all be worth it when I have my little baby here.

12 more weeks! I can make it!

Transitions

I've been thinking a lot about Grace's growth and development lately.

Like possibly even more than normal.

(Shocking! Ha ha)

And a huge concern of mine is the number of transitions that will be happening for our family in the next little bit.

Grace has always done fairly well with everything life has thrown at her.

Heck, when she was only 10 months old her mommy was hospitalized for 3 days and the month prior and several months following probably weren't my most stellar mommy moments.

But what about the predictable, controllable transitions in life?

We are going to have a lot this summer....fall/winter....basically the next 6+ months.

These transitions include:

-New Baby!! Wooo!!
-Buying a house
-Moving to a toddler bed
-Potty training

That's a lot for an almost 2 year old to process.

That's a lot for ME to process!

I'm kind of kicking and screaming at the thought of all of those things having to happen.

Bleeehhh.

Starting with new baby....

That's inevitable. That's the one that has to happen no matter what. And we're so excited for it to happen!

He's coming! We love him already and that's probably the happiest of all the transitions.

It's going to be interesting to see Grace's attitude about the new baby.

She will LOVE him!

But she might not want to keep him at first.

She is probably going to be very confused WHY we are keeping him.

I can already see the scene in my head.

Mommy and Daddy explaining that Baby's in our family and going to live at our house. Grace will dramatically fall onto my lap crying, lay her head down on said lap and say: "k...."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Side story: She says  "k..." to everything. It's pretty funny. She says it when she understands something you're explaining to her. She says it when she has to come to grips with a situation she doesn't like. She says it happily when we tell her we're going to go do something fun. She says it every night when I tuck her into bed.

"Have a good night, sweetheart, love you."

"k...."

Ha ha ha. I love her.

Maybe I'm just preparing myself for the worst with the new baby. She might end being super crazy happy about it and never look back.

I just know how clingy she is to me and Jeff.

Especially me.

We are her Mommy and Daddy and she loves that fact.

Once he comes home and we get used to the first couple weeks I think she'll be the best big sister.

She's very good at helping and following directions, so I think she'll want to "help" a lot. And she loves learning how things work and how to do things, so I'm sure she'll want to watch everything that's going on with her baby brother. Hopefully she'll let him sleep and won't want to be in his face all the time! Ha ha

Next transition...

Buying a house!

This one.

The bain of my existence at the moment.

We have been "seriously" looking for a house for about 4 months now.

I've been flat out looking at houses for maybe two years by now, ha ha ha ha.

But the seriousness has been about 4 months.

We know exactly what we want.

We know exactly what we don't want.

We know exactly where we want.

With knowing all the exacts, it's maybe taking us longer to find something?

The market is really bad right now. It's a seller's market so everything gets sold on the first day it's listed and goes above asking price.

It's hard....

We've put offers in on two houses so far and those didn't work out.

I just keep thinking it'll get busier in the summer and then maybe it won't be so competitive and more people will want to move in the summer so there will be more options?

It's probably wishful thinking.

Honestly, we don't HAVE to move right now.

We aren't under a contract/lease with our apartment (never have been, our landlord is the best) and we could still fit here for a while longer. We wouldn't mind bringing the baby home here, especially since he is going to sleep in our room for the first several months.

Our apartment is still small though.

I don't even want to guess how many square feet, cause that might make it sound more depressing, ha ha ha.

We've been here our entire marriage! Coming up on 5 1/2 years.

That's pretty crazy to me, because nearly all of the people I know who got married the same time as us, or even a shorter amount of time than us have already moved 1-3 times, ha ha.

This apartment has been the biggest blessing for us.

And maybe that's why we're being so picky, because if we're going to move it better be worth it, ya know?

Since we aren't rushed time wise we can afford to get what we want.

The third transition....

Toddler bed.

This one terrifies me more than the potty training or any other thing dealing with Grace's growing up right now.

Why?

Because Grace is a ROCKSTAR sleeper.

She always has been!

It's been well over 18 months since she started sleeping 12 hours through the night.

I can count on half a hand the number of times she has woken up in the night due to sickness or needing us for some reason.

She loves her sleep.

She's had a cough the past little bit and the other night it was pretty bad. She just kept sleeping through it, but it was driving Jeff nuts. He kept asking if he should go in and give her a drink.

Between my snores I was like "fine, yeah, whatever, I dunno..."

So he finally went in, woke her up, and asked her if she wanted a drink.

Through her tiredness she was like "Uh...yeah...?"

(This is all from Jeff telling me later how it went down)

So he picked her up, gave her some sips of water, asked if she wanted more, she did...

Then after she was done she said "k...lay..."

And wanted to lay back down to sleep again, ha ha ha.

I don't know about other people's children, but I feel like a lot of toddlers being woken up in the night would be like "Sweet! I just got a solid 4 hours of sleep! Is this a party or something? Let's go watch Paw Patrol!"

Ha ha ha.

Not Grace. She very much enjoys her sleep.

So maybe I'm overreacting thinking moving her to a toddler bed is going to be horrible?

Maybe it'll be seamless, because she loves sleep so much?

I really hope so.

I think the biggest thing is, I'm having a hard time deciding WHEN this transition should happen.

I don't know if I should do it here while we're still in this apartment?

Wait till we move?

I don't want her to feel like we're giving her crib to the baby, cause she might feel replaced?

So many variables.

And maybe I'm over thinking it, but that's what people who delve deeply into early childhood development do.

They over analyze how different things will effect a young child's development.

Ha ha ha.

I have learned one thing correlating with that though....

It's okay to think deeply about it all, but when to comes to presenting it to the child you have to keep your cool. Children can sense pressure and fear from adults that things aren't going their way.

Gotta keep it firm and positive.

Okay, my soap box is getting too big...moving on...

Lastly, potty training.

I've blogged about her "potty training" experience so far.

We are pretty much at a stand still with potty training for now, which is fine with me.

Everything that has happened up until now has very much been Gracie Goo driven, and I think we're going to keep it that way.

That being said, I THINK if I were to take the leap she would be able to be potty trained pretty fast right now.

She is showing all these signs of readiness, but I don't think our lives are showing those same signs.

With ALL of these big transitions going on, I feel like would be setting her up to fail if I potty trained her right now.

We're going to see how the baby brother transition goes and then maybe a couple months after we are used to him we'll see where she's at and if she's still ready to potty train.

One of the biggest annoyances with this whole potty training business, and something that I think is a HUGE sign that she's ready is she hates hates hates having a wet or dirty diaper now.

She complains about it hurting, which really is her saying it's uncomfortable.

She had been saying it "hurt", so we actually took her to the doctor to make sure she didn't have a bladder infection or UTI. Of course she didn't.....she just likes to cry wolf and get attention.

Silly thing.

I think it is a big sign that she could be potty trained though....cause she just wants to be clean down there all the time! I can't blame her....she's a big girl now, she knows it's not fun to have a diaper on!

Well, she's waking up from her nap now, so I should probably go rescue her. I guess that'd be one nice thing about a toddler bed is she could just hop out of bed on her own, ha ha ha.

We will see when and how all of these things unfold.

For now I'll just go on over analyzing, and enjoying her cute little self.

Today while Jeff was home for lunch she was sitting by him on the couch coloring in her coloring book. She looked over at me and said: "Look Mom, I color this!"

I was so impressed with that sentence! She says more and more diverse things everyday.

Love that little Gracie Goo.

Bye Bye Babyhood

I've been thinking a lot about Grace leaving her babyhood behind.

I think she left it behind a long time ago, but I still see her as my little bub.

She can walk,  talk in sentences,  feed herself,  go potty sometimes, understand how people are feeling based on facial expressions. She knows animal names/sounds,  colors,  some shapes,  countless objects and what they do. She knows how to regulate how she's feeling with a little help (SOMETIMES, obviously that one's hard even for me, hahaha).

All of those things are pretty grown up.

She's really not a baby anymore.

I feel like she's going to completely lose her baby status when the new baby comes though.

Like I'm just going to rip it out from under her and she'll be left a big girl with a lot to live up to!

I know she's already there,  but I'm clinging on to the fact that she's my baby for as long as I can.

I love this sweet little one.

Being a mom changes your whole world.

I can't wait to see how she changes with me when her baby brother arrives. It'll be a learning curve for everyone!  She's going to so awesome though, because she already excels at so much.

I love my big, grown up girl!