Baby Comparison

I thought you all might enjoy a belly shot of the current pregnancy, along with a comparison to Robin's.  I'm at 31 weeks in each of these pictures.  The first is now, and the second is with Robin:

The scale might not be exact, but I think it's close.  The shape of this belly is definitely more of a shelf, whereas Robin was more rounded.  You can see I was a bit puffier last time too, perhaps from retaining more water (or gaining more weight?  or both--I actually haven't compared weight gain, so I don't know whether I'm ahead or behind last time.)

My belly is already getting in the way when I try to tie my shoes, and I'm noticing that getting up from the floor (something I'm doing a lot more with this pregnancy than the last) takes a lot more effort now.  The baby is quite strong and I'm a little afraid of it getting 9 weeks stronger.  Oof.

We're starting to freak out about how little time we have left before baby's arrival.  Mainly we need to finish Robin's bed so we can repurpose the crib, move what remains of my office downstairs in with Dean, and paint/put up a mural in the baby's room.  That's a lot to do with a bunch of birthday celebrations, Easter, a vacation, and Mother's Day all rolled into our remaining time too.  Yikes.  We're going to be pretty busy for the next few months!

On another note, Robin can now count to nine!  I had made him a bunch of car cutouts from his playdough, and that was how many we had.  I asked him to count them and I didn't count along with him like I usually do.  To my surprise and delight, he got to nine all by himself!  He only repeated it once, though, before he must've gotten tired of showing off and starting messing around with the order of the numbers.  But we have managed to get him to repeat the feat a few times so we know he knows it.  (I'll see if I can't get a video of this sometime soon.)

March Madness

Some March pictures for your enjoyment:

Robin playing the drums with his monkey and Grandpa

As part of our massive home reorganization, Dean purchased this toy organizer.  It holds a lot of Robin's toys and makes it so he can see what he has without having to dig to the bottom of his chest.  So far Robin's been more willing to clean up when putting things back in here, but we'll see how long that lasts for.  :)

Giving his donkey (suddenly a current favorite toy) a ride on the Fisher Price phone

We did a lot of work on our garage recently, and while Robin "helped" a bit, he usually wound up playing in my car before too long.  This particular time, he strapped himself into his car seat and wanted Monkey to drive.

Wearing Ama's gloves while making her play in the car with him.

Our Leprechaun from this year (my, how he's grown!)

We went back to the museum because Robin kept requesting it.  It was a very crowded day, though, so we didn't have as much access to the exhibits as I would have liked.  We still had fun though.  There's a Pirate exhibit going on right now, and while we didn't go to it, Robin examined the mannekin by the door.

Here he is with some walruses.  Did you know they could get this big?

This is from "Tykes Peak" in the Exhibition Health exhibit.  There were some pretty rambunctuous kids in there at first, and Robin learned how to do this from them:

On March 19 we were visitng my parents and took a walk to try and see the Moon while it was really big and near the horizon.  The clouds interfered with most of it, but at least we got to play in the park in the dark!

Jumping on some bubble wrap from when we unpacked a bunch of stuff we'd hidden while trying to sell the house.

We went to the museum (yet again!) with my parents during Mom's spring break.  Parking was horrendous as most of Denver was on spring break too, but we enjoyed ourselves once we got in.  We got to explore the Discovery Zone, an

area kind of like the Children's Museum with activities for little kids.

We also checked out the dinosaurs.

Being swung between Ama and Poppa.  (He almost tried to flip over the last time they did this.)

You can click here and here to see the posts I made about our March craft projects on Science Fiction Mommy.

And here to see my post about our garage and basement improvements.

Ciao!

Staycation

Dean took the last full week of February off from work, and we had a staycation.  We did a lot of home improvement projects (which I'll detail at a later time) that took up large chunks of time.  Since taking our home off the market, we've been reorganizing, unpacking all the stuff we got out of the way in order to stage the house, and building things that need to be built.  But we also made time for some fun stuff.

On Tuesday we went to the Zoo, which was nice since it's been a while.

Geese are scary.

On Wednesday, we went to the Museum.  We checked out Gems (Robin got bored,) Space, and the newer Health/Life exhibit--all ones we haven't been to in a while (or at all.)

Can you see Dean's and my faces in the giant pin board?

Robin age-progressed to 70.

Then on Friday we went to the Children's Museum.  It was a lot more crowded than the last few times we've gone--we had to wait a lont time for our turn to drive the fire engine.

Shopping in the kid-sized supermarket (it was stocked full of organic products, even!)

Bubbles!

We didn't get much chance to sleep in this week, what with making sure we left the house with enough time to enjoy these places before naptime, but we all had fun.  The only downside was that Robin picked up a cold from somewhere (Zoo or Museum, probably) and passed it on to Dean and I.  But we're all better now.

Oh Yeah!

For those whom I have failed to spread the word to, I am now a published author!  My story Night Terrors is in the anthology Doomology:  The Dawning of Disasters now available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  Please check it out!!!!!

February Fun!

A February update!

Robin is now tall enough to turn on light switches without standing on anything.  He is very proud of this ability, and is happy with how useful it is.  He has also started using a few limited three-word sentences!  They often lack a real verb (and a lot of his communication is still through sound effects and pantomime) but we know what he means.  He can manage "Robin help Mama" (when he helps me with something, "No Mama help" when he doesn't want help, and "More help please" in addition to the ones that aren't proper English yet.  I do find it amusing how I can figure out what he means (sometimes!) based on sound effects and context.  For example, he was playing with a ball of yarn in my office one day and I told him he was playing like a cat.  The next day he pointed into my office saying "Meow" so I knew he wanted to play with the yarn again.  Of course, anybody else would be totally lost on that conversation.  I'm really excited about the language breakthroughs he's made, but I'm still impatient for more.  But now on to some pictures!

Robin playing with the new legos he got for Christmas

Crawling under his train table to keep playing under there

Robin helping with the support bracket for the new microwave we installed

Play dough!  (A good freezing-weather activity)

I made Robin a fishing game.  So far, he lacks the fine motor skills to catch the fish while holding the stick and not the magnet, but we'll get there.

We went to the indoor amusement park Funtastic Fun for a friend's son's 5th birthday party.  Unfortunately the park will be relocating far away in June--it's really close now and we've been meaning to take Robin for ages.  He had a blast, and all the rides were kid-friendly--but not all were parent-friendly.  This whip ride was the first Robin's ever ridden without Dean or I.  I was worried that he would be worried at first, especially since he looked unsure when it started moving, but on the second or third time around he saw me and smiled, so I knew he was having fun.  (By the way, the birthday boy is the one in the car in front of him.  He's sitting with some random kid that we didn't know, because the entire ride was full.)

Gabe and Robin

Other fun party shots

Our Valentine's Day breakfast (Robin just had the heart-shaped toast, since he still can't have eggs.)

We tried making a snow bunny once it got warm enough to turn the freezing, dry snow into something packable.

Crikey!

We purchased a set of clippers and tried the new method of cutting Robin's hair.  I still need practice, but at least this haircut didn't make me ask "My God, what have I done???" like some of the other attempts have.

Click here to read about the crafts Robin and I did in February over on Science Fiction Mommy, and here to see our new sensory bin.

We've been super busy rearranging the house and making improvements lately.  We officially took the house off the market at the end of February :( because we didn't want to deal with moving (or selling) with an infant, plus we needed time to nest.  Eventually I'll post some home improvement pics--but since we're so busy I'll probably remain terminally behind.  See you all some other time!

(And please start commenting again!!!  I love hearing your reactions!)