Happy Halloween!

At the last minute he decided he wanted scary black hair, but it was too late.

A close-up of my less than stellar attempt at being a makeup artist.

If I had donned an orange t-shirt I could have been mistaken for the Great Pumpkin this year.

With proud Mamaw and Poppy.

With very frightened Tito. (This is my favorite one).

Crazy for scary guys

Gabriel is mad in love with Halloween this year.

I think it all started when we were at the grocery store and they had put up an animated witch and skeleton to lure people into the Halloween section of the store. The witch worked from the get-go, but we could never get the skeleton to do anything. So every time we had to go shop, he wanted to see the witch. It's probably the only way I have been able to get him excited about going shopping. Then we visited the Target display one day where they had several sizes of animated skeletons, including one he figured out how to run himself, and he has been hooked ever since. We took a trip to the temporary Halloween store that sets up in an empty store front to add to our decorations this year, and he spent the entire time going from one ghoulish creature to the next with his mouth hanging open. Some of these were really frightening and I kept thinking he would show some sign of fear, but no. He calls it the "Scary Guy Store", and I've promised him another trip there next week when Daddy will be out of town all week.

Then we put up our decorations, and it has now become an evening ritual to go out and plug in our lights once it's dark. We also turn on "Gus", our new and really scary animated skeleton, for a little while since the rest of the day he spends hanging in our garage. We fear that someone might steal him if we leave him out all day and night, so he's only up while the lights are on during the evening. As soon as it's dark, Gabriel starts asking if we can wake up Gus and turn on the lights.

He's been wanting me to buy a pumpkin but I told him we should probably wait and go to a pumpkin patch with Daddy. In all honesty, I wasn't even going to get one this year because we don't have any place to put one on our porch that can be seen from the street, and I hate throwing them away every year. It just seems so wasteful. I didn't think he'd even remember, but he's asked about it every day and I finally remembered to tell Jav that we need to go pick one out. Today we are heading to Chico, Texas for my friend Cobra's memorial service, and we're hoping to spot a Farmer's Market or something along the way. I actually think he's into all of this enough to enjoy carving a Jack O'Lantern this year.

He has two Halloween books that I had put up with the decorations, and he wants to read one or both or them every night before bedtime. He's also been asking me to have a Halloween party. One of my biggest dreams in life is to throw a huge Halloween party one day, so I tell him that one day we will have one. I mean going all out with decorations inside and out, and scary food and music. But this isn't the year for it! I keep him happy by telling him that they will have a Halloween party at school next week, and he gets to wear his Halloween t-shirts all week (they don't want them in costumes at school until they're out of diapers and I can't really blame them!) And then, of course, the ultimate prize: trick or treating in his new skeleton costume Saturday.

It amazes me how much more he's understanding about everything these days, but especially this. Although Jav points out that this is my favorite holiday and time of year, so he probably picks up on that and has run with it! To be honest, I can't wait to take him to a haunted house (several years down the road, of course), but in the meantime I am looking forward to that trip to the Scary Guy Store just as much as he is!

The good, bad and ugly of pregnancy

When I found out I was pregnant again, and made it past the "scary" time, I told myself that I would really try to enjoy this pregnancy - seeing that it will be my last. Those first four and a half months were so rough, though, between worrying about what might go wrong and being nauseous all day after 2 pm, every day. Once I started feeling a little better, I did start to really enjoy it for about three months. The baby started moving, which really is a miraculous feeling. To know that my child is growing inside of me is something that moves me so profoundly that I really can't stop to think about it too hard or I wouldn't be able to go about my day.

When I hit around eight months, I started to hurt more, especially my legs. I know I've gained more weight than I should have, even though I haven't gained any more than I did with Gabriel (YET). But this big guy seems heavier than Gabriel ever did. And I was working with Gabriel, which meant I could sit and put my feet up more all day long. The constant being on my feet has really taken a toll on me, especially at night when my legs get stiff from not getting enough blood flow. I can barely walk when I get up and have to stand for awhile to make sure my legs will work. Then I started having these really bad back spasms when I stood still for any length of time (like to cook or do the dishes). That seems to be better now, and we're thinking it might have been related to the 100% humidity that we had during that time. I was still walking Molly up until a few weeks ago, but then I had a really bad walk one day where it felt like all of my belly ligaments were starting to sag and I ended up having to actually hold my belly with one hand while I slowly made my way home. So walks are done for now, which makes both me and Molly sad.

One of the hardest things about this physically has been not being able to play with Gabriel like I want to. He's so much more mature and never stops moving now. I feel like all I do all day is tell him "Mommy can't get on the floor anymore", "Mommy can't run right now", "Mommy can't jump", "Mommy needs to sit down and rest". He's probably ready to trade me in for a newer, funner model at this point! But he has been really sweet about it, and loves to kiss my tummy to say hi to the baby. I'll have one especially sweet memory after his nap one day. Gabriel woke up crying from having a bad dream, so I took him to the rocker and held him. The baby got hiccups and Gabriel happened to be laying right where he could feel them, which he thought was pretty funny, and I thought was wonderful.

There are things emotionally going on too, like thinking too much about what it will be like after the baby is here. Will I be too tired all the time to be a good, fun Mom like I want to be? Will I be cranky and snappy all the time? Will I be able to lose all of this weight? Is trying to breast feed going to stress me out so bad that I can't enjoy either of my kids? (I did not have a good experience with Gabriel, so really want to try again with this one). Obviously, living in the present would be a better idea since I can have no way of knowing any of these things.

One of the most surprising emotions that has hit me recently is a sadness about the relationship between Gabriel and I. I know it will change forever when the baby comes, and I feel sometimes like just holding onto him and trying to spend as much time as I can with him before that happens. It's not that I think we don't have enough love for two kids, it's just this melancholy and nostalgic feeling that I haven't quite had enough time with just Gabriel. This was a feeling I never expected to have. And I think I'm even empathetic about how he's going to feel to have to share us with another kid. But my sensible and wonderful husband says to just think about the fact that we are giving him a brother, and how much happiness we hope that will bring him one day. That does make it better.

I'm getting excited about meeting this new little guy. I wonder who he will look like, will he have lots of hair (Gabriel didn't), will his personality be similar or completely opposite of Gabriel's. Fun stuff to be thinking about, and sometimes I still have to pinch myself that this is really happening. So despite all of the physical and emotional toll this seems to be taking on me, I still think that being pregnant is the best feeling in the whole world.

Annual Halloween decorating

This will be the annual shot where we get to compare how much he's grown since last year.

Daddy's little helper bee.

Not a Halloween pic, but I love this picture.

Gabriel is really into Halloween this year. He loves the big, animated characters, which he references as "scary guys". He could spend hours at the Halloween store just going from one to the other. I had thought maybe he could be a fireman or something this year, but he wanted to be a skeleton. So we are letting him wear the body part but ditching the mask, mostly because it freaks him out but partly because you can't tell it's him at all. I got a face painting kit and we'll see if my creative side kicks in when it's crunch time. We have a fun ritual every night now of going out, plugging in the lights and hanging up Gus, our resident scary guy that we keep in the garage so he won't get stolen. It amazes me that he has no fear whatsoever. Such a boy.

I'm so lucky. No I mean REALLY lucky.

Today is my wonderful hubby's birthday. I will start off this post by saying that the ONLY bad thing about marrying someone as truly thoughtful as Jav is that it becomes way too easy to take him for granted when we are in the swing of this crazy thing called life.

But it hits me in little details throughout my days and evenings how much I love him and why.

He has the patience of Job and never lets my frenetic impulsiveness or moods disturb his calmness. He puts up with my Type A personality with something I can only call amusement, which seems to totally work for us.

He never complains about anything. If I give him extra honey-do's on the weekend (which is usually already packed full of things he is trying to get done), he just tries to get them done with no protest.

He is a hopeless romantic and isn't afraid to cry when his emotions get the best of him, something I think makes a man somehow more manlier.

I have as much fun watching old movies with him as I do watching baseball playoffs. We recently took four nights to watch Dr. Zhivago, which I had seen twice but he had never seen. I came away from it with a much deeper perspective sitting there watching it with someone I love.

He has the best laugh I've ever heard, and he uses it often. And he makes me laugh.

He makes sure to talk with his Mom almost every day.

He is a terrific Dad, and one that I know will be the best role model I could hope for. And as an extra bonus, he's warm and loving, and really gets into being a parent. He is involved just as much as I am, even with the messier parts of parenting.

He'll eat just about anything I put in front of him, and even if he doesn't really like it will say it was "interesting".

No matter what we little mundane things we are doing or what errands we are running, during any given second of every day, I love being with him.

Happy Birthday Honey!

Potty training woes

I'm not sure if it's because we didn't wrap our brains around this one particular part of parenting soon enough, or if Gabriel is just a little slower than average in developmental stages, but we are having a time with potty training.

We bought him a potty chair too early, I realize now. I think he had just turned 2? Or maybe even 18 months. He wanted to sit in it lots at first. Now he protests almost every time I ask if he wants to sit in it. I started the T. Berry Brazelton book on potty training, but realized Gabriel had not reached all of the steps showing that he is ready to try this (Dr. Brazelton's approach is that they have to come around on this ON THEIR OWN, without much pushing with Mom and Dad if you want long-term success).

But the pressures of society, I guess, got us thinking that we really needed to start thinking about this since he's three now. We set up a box of favorite books by the chair, and said those were his special potty chair books now. This worked for a little while. But now he tries to take the books to his room instead of leaving them in the bathroom, which just starts another conflict. We started using pullups in the hope that he would not like the feeling of being wetter, but he doesn't seem to mind walking around completely soaked. This makes me frustrated and guilty that I forget to check him more often.

I asked my friend Christine for advice, and she said I should be taking him to sit on the potty chair every two hours or so. Well, trying that often makes Gabriel really upset, which is one of the things Dr. Brazelton says will do alot of damage. Christine also suggested letting him wear normal underpants so that he would really feel the wetness, as long as I was prepared to do laundry all the time. I haven't convinced myself that this would be a good idea yet, mostly because Gabriel just doesn't seem to mind being wet.

I've tried reasoning, comparisons to other kids, even tears. It just doesn't seem like he's the least bit interested, which is very disheartening to me. I'm trying to resign myself to not put any pressure on him, but it's getting tougher since I wanted to be farther along in this process when the new baby gets here. I've been told that he will probably regress a little bit when that happens, but right now we have no place to regress from!

Gabriel has triplets in his Mother's Day Out class that turn three in December, and their Mom already has them trained. I realize this was probably out of monetary necessity (she also has an almost one-year-old.) Can you imagine having to buy all those diapers? - UGH. But this made me feel like an utter failure. I still want to ask her what method she used if I can catch her one day. But in the meantime I think I will just lay off for awhile until I come up with a new plan. Or maybe I need to let Gabriel take the reins and just try to gently guide. I have no idea. AAGGGHHHHH!!!!

Flu scare

I try not to be a paranoid person, but I know I probably am when it comes to Gabriel, and now to this baby. And frankly, this Swine Flu thing is scaring the heck out me. There have been six deaths in North Texas. The first four victims had underlying health issues. But now there have been two deaths of perfectly healthy children. And this morning on NPR, they had this frightening story for us. And until last week, I assumed Gabriel would be a candidate for Tamaflu if he had any symptoms, but no, it's kids 2 and under.

So for now we are taking some precautions, like avoiding big crowds. Our parish's big yearly fundraising event, the International Fair, was yesterday and we decided not to go. We've also decided to avoid Mass for awhile, because I have a theory that sometimes people think they have to still go every week even if they're sick. For now we are still sending Gabriel to his twice-a-week Mother's Day Out, but I'm getting more and more nervous about it. We decided that unless were notified that even one flu case had shown up, we'd continue to send him. I know most people just stay really sick for 5 or 6 days, then get better. But the randomness about the truly awful cases like the one in the NPR story is what terrifies me.

I was also nervous about taking the vaccine whenever it finally shows up since they appear to be rushing it through, but I guess I have to trust my doctor and the CDC (and a big dose of God), that the risk of not taking it greatly outweighs the risks from the vaccine. The way they are dragging their feet, though, the baby may be here before I get a chance to take it. According to everything I've read, his best protection will be for all of us to get the vaccine.

So we will be a pretty paranoid family for awhile, but we all think it's for a good reason.

A few more birthday pics

Tia Sandie's idea. Gabriel is still saying it a week later even though it's all washed off now.

Jav and his Dad.

The first time we broke out the croquet set, and the first time Cade and Macy had ever played.

My sweet niece and nephew enjoying the new swing set.

Our wonderful neighbors, Billie and George. We're so happy they've become family to us.

Our little mingler stopping to watch a quick ping pong match before moving on to other things.

Showing off his new remote control bulldozer to Tita.