Ok, I guess I’m posting pictures by demand
now. You know what they say about the squeaky wheel :) Anyway,
many people have been asking for pictures from Grandma’s party
and I figured now enough time has passed that we can look at
photos and reminisce :) Sooo…. without further ado… photos from
Grandma’s party.

We are in the 11th week now and the weight
gain has begun. As with my first pregnancy, I lost several
pounds in the beginning, but now we’re going back up. Because
I’m overweight to begin with, they recommended I gain 25lbs
with Lex. Sadly I gained 33lbs and it was sooo much harder than
I ever expected to lose it again. This time they recommeded
15lbs. We’ll see about that :) I broke out the maternity pants
today though. The past few days I’ve been wearing my jeans
unbuttoned or some running pants I have (not that I ever run in
them). Today we are having company though, so I need to be a
little more presentable. And I need to clean the house!!

Anyway, another thing that just started
happening is that when I lay on my belly I can feel a tiny
lump. Almost like I’m lying on someting in the bed, but it’s
just baby two :) That’s a fun feeling. I was reading the baby
Zig blog to see how all of this compared to the first time
around, but turns out I didn’t start that blog until 22 weeks,
so we’ll never know.

PS>
Lex took a great nap yesterday afternoon and when we woke up
one bump was almost gone and the other much smaller. We all had
a bad night last night, but I don’t think it was head-injury
related :)

Lex gave me a good scare today. He fell of
the bed backwards, not the first time and I’m sure it won’t be
the last, but this time he got two big welts on the back of his
head. All of the other times he’s fallen (yes, he’s an active
boy) he maybe got red marks, but nothing more. This time two
quarter-sized welts popped up immediately, one purple and one
with a red line through it like it almost broke skin, but not
quite. Needless to say he screamed (which is good) and resisted
the ice pack I tried to use. Meanwhile I got right on the phone
with the pedi’s office. I was really scared and ready to take
him into the emergency room! Silly mommy. The nurse was very
nice and said that as long as he is conscience (yep) and not
vomiting (nope) then there’s no need to bring him in. She told
me a few things to watch for and suggested we watch a little TV
while he reclines on my chest (with ice pack between us). Very
smart nurse. I made up a bag of ice and he snuggled his head
right in to it for 1/2 hour of Baby Einstein. It was scary. I’m
gonna have to toughen up though, I’m sure, as he gets older and
more rambunctious I’m sure there will be many more scary
moments.

I love this little man. He
makes me so happy. I’ve been reading my Baby Zig blog and the
first few months on this blog to remind myself about pregnancy
and newborns. It seems like forever ago. I’m dreading the
complete lack of sleep (I slept in one hour bursts!!) but I’m
excited about the rest. And every time I look at Lex I’m just
amazed at the process. I wonder if we could ever make such a
perfect being again. Poor Baby 2 might be doomed from the
start. :)

We made apple pie yesterday.
Lex helped by standing on the chair and eating the apples. He
also threw in a few of his own ingredients (measuring spoon,
jar of cinnamon, etc.). Today he got back up on the chair to
eat grapes out of the sink (collendar) while I made lunch. He’s
is so helpful. Actually, yesterday he really was helpful when I
was packing the closet. He put all of our shoes into the bottom
of the wardrobe box and then he put all of the extra hangers
into the box too. It was really very helpful and he worked so
hard!

Ok, it’s late now and I gotta get
lots of sleeping in before March :)

After a brief (2 day) blog outage last
week I decided it was time to stop being lazy and make an
offline archive of my blog. Blogger doesn’t make this easy, but
hey, you get what you pay for, right? They did post a little
tutorial that got me started. I have
a few additional notes if anyone else wants to do the same.
Since this is the official baby book as well, I would be very
sad to lose it.

Lots going on lately and
the boy is growing up so fast. I’m going to go play with him
now though because he has been exceptionally patient while I
figured out this archiving thing. It’s cold and dreary out
today and I’m pretty sure he’s as bored as can be :) More
later.

PS> Blogger’s spell
checker doesn’t recognize the words “blog” or “Blogger” :)
Funny.

This whole pacifier thing is so much
harder than I’d hoped. Baby falls asleep pretty easily at night
without it, but naps during the day are impossible. He sits in
his crib and cries and cries. Then, between sobs, he starts
asking for his plug. Over the monitor I hear “puh, puh, puh”
(plug) and I know he’s sitting there making the sign and
everything. It breaks my heart. Eventually I give in and give
him the plug. When I do he looks so grateful and puts his head
down and goes right to sleep. I know giving in is probably the
worst thing I can do, but, well…. I’m weak.

I know some of you are
suffering from photo withdrawl (not many here and I’m horrible
at updating the real photo site lately), so here are a few to
tide you over. We went to a farmer’s market yesterday and Lex,
as usual, had a great time. He spent most of the time dancing
to the music or trying to rearrange people’s vegetable
displays. He’s a very helpful boy :) We met the Chad-A-Saurus.
Lex was interested and amused and followed him around for
awhile. We also bought some cornbread muffins (Lex was asking
for a snack) and a bunch of multi-color carrots. I think I’ll
cook them up for dinner tonight. The first pic here is just
from dinner the other night. The boy gets so messy when he
eats, especially when he gets tired and starts rubbing his eyes
and ears.

Lex is such a toddler these days. It’s
adorable, hysterical, and sometimes frusterating. He likes to
get mad at me and storm off into his room. He can slam his
door, but he can’t open it again :) So I have to go rescue him.
Hehehe… Diaper changes are always fun because he uses both
hands and feet to try to prevent me from putting a new diaper
on him. He fights and fights and says “no, no, no, no.” The
game is to figure out a way to get his hands busy as a
distraction. Sometimes I can sing “The itsy, bitsy spider” and
he’ll do the hand motions. Other times we play “big Lex, little
Lex” and he does the signs. Each diaper change requires a new
game. Another toddler-ism, I vacuumed the house today and you
can just watch him waiver between bold and scare. He runs up to
the vacuum and tries to stand on it, but then suddenly runs
away and hides behind the fan (like that will protect him!). Or
he’ll get his little musical roller toy thing (that is supposed
to be like a lawn mower, we think) and “vacuum” with it. When I
turned on the vacuum today he ran and grabbed his toy and
walked around the bedroom in front of me. I told him he was
doing an excellent first pass :) Then, suddenly, he ran away
and hid behind the chair in the living room. His running is
equally funny to watch. He kicks his legs out to the side and
does a sort of hopping run. He’s pretty good at it though and
can make good time. He’s crazy, crazy, crazy and I love
it!

Had another less than satisfying
experience at Home Depot yesterday. Just me and Lex this time,
trying to place an order for the remaining cabinets we need.
Mind you, I have done *all* of the research and work on this
thing. I have a complete list of what I need and laughed at the
website when it said “bring this list to Home Depot and they
will help you finalize your kitchen and place your order.” Not
my Home Depot! The cabinet lady was so rude to me this time
that I actually walked out on her. I grabbed my list and told
her that she is the rudest most unhelpful person I have ever
met and that I would be taking my business elsewhere. Then I
found a manager and told him as well. I’ve never done that
before! It felt good (until I cried on the phone to Alan later
:) ). The manager was very nice and helped me load the few
items I was able to find into the car. He also said he’d like
to set me up with one of the other cabinet sales people (my
luck she’s the only one there everytime I go) and he hoped they
wouldn’t lose our business. Not like they really care, I’m
sure. So now I’m trying to decided if I should let him set up
an appointment with someone else, or if I should just get in
the car and drive for an hour to the next nearest Home Depot.
Only one Home Depot around here… damn country living!
:)

Over the past week or so, Lex’s vocabulary
has gotten great. He started using multiple phonemes and
repeating, or trying to repeat, words we say. He says “house”
and “mouse” and “milk” and “socks” and “snack” (“nack” really),
but his new favorite word, and activity, is “books.” He says
the word perfectly and he’s become quite the avid reader. Well,
listener anyway, as he forces us to read hundreds of books a
day to him. “Baby Donald Goes to Playland” appears to be his
favorite and it’s an absolutely horrible Disney book. But he
loves it, so we read it about 20 times a day. Sometimes he’ll
bring me a book, say “book”, then drop it on the floor so he
can make the sign, then pick it back up and hand it to me :)
Very smart baby. And silly. Today he came up to me, book in
hand, and said “dogs.” I was confused and almost corrected him,
but then I noticed the book he had was “Doggies” by Sandra Boynton. My
favorite is “Hey! Wake Up!” also by Sandra
Boynton. On the page that says “Shout out loud, GOOD MORNING
SUN, HAPPY MORNING EVERYONE” I shout it out loud and Lex laughs
and laughs. He now expects it and as soon as we turn to the
page he whips his head around to look at me :)

Anyway, lots going on these days. We spent
about 5 hours in Home Depot yesterday trying to order cabinets.
It was pretty much a nightmare. We were too disorganzied (the
three of us and Alan’s parents) and didn’t quite know what we
wanted, I had a few false assumptions that I didn’t state
clearly so no one was able to correct, and our sales lady was
less than helpful. So it was long and annoying. But we do owe a
big thanks to Grandpa Don for being such a great babysitter! We
ended up with a quote for $8200 *choke* and went home to
regroup and put the baby to bed. After dinner and some online
research we saw the error in our ways. We were being quoted
full custom cabinetry and that’s not exactly what we had the
budget for. We ended up going back and buying about half of
what we need in prefab cabinets that you can buy right off the
shelf. Lower quality (yes, I’ll admit it), but more inline with
the wallet. So, by 10:00pm (we closed Home Depot!!) we finally
made some progress. Don’t worry, Grandpa was babysitting the
sleeping boy at home. We didn’t keep either of them up that
late! :)

Today we did some online
research at Consumer Reports and went to Sears with a list of
appliances we needed, hoping for a Labor Day sale. Turns out
they don’t have a Labor Day sale (well, they have a standard
sale that lasts for a few weeks, but nothing specific) and,
more importantly, they didn’t have anything we needed! Another
wasted trip! At least Lex had fun climbing on the treadmills,
riding the lawn mowers, and “helping” other customers with
their shopping.

So here we are,
shopping online. Why do we bother leaving the house anyway?
:)

On a bright note, we went to the
house yesterday to do measurements (another aggrivation at Home
Depot) and met the current owners (ok) and one of our
soon-to-be neighbors. He was very nice and has two Golden
Retrievers. Lex was in heaven. I told the guy that it would be
very hard to keep Lex out of his yard. He laughed and said his
boys are both grown and there are no grandkids yet, so he’d
love company from a friendly baby. The dogs even let Lex sit on
them! All will be good once the remodeling is done and we’re
living in our new house.