16 weeks.

Due to popular demand, I'll be posting a picture of Jim with a freshly-built 'houf' on Monday. For now, here's on update on No-no's well-being.

How far along? 16 weeks.
Total weight gain/loss: Down two pounds, thanks to some bad coleslaw. Noah and I have both been ridiculously sick the past day or two. Jim, fortunately, wouldn't eat anything but mac 'n' cheese that night, so he's just fine.
Maternity clothes? Of course.
Stretch marks? No new ones.
Sleep: Really bad. I have a hard time getting to sleep, toss and turn all night with weird dreams, and then wake up at 6 since Jim has decided he likes getting up early lately. SO CRANKY.
Best moment this week: Getting blood successfully drawn on the first try! Usually it takes them fifteen attempts before they give up and use the back of my hand.
Movement: A little fluttering here and there.
Food cravings: Nothing right now. Food = gross and horrible.
Gender: Don't know, but hopefully we can schedule the u/s to find out when I have my appointment Monday.
Labor Signs: Nope.
Belly Button in or out? In.
What I miss: Climbing the stairs without getting out of breath.
What I am looking forward to: Knowing if it's a he-baby or a she-baby.
Weekly Wisdom: Don't eat coleslaw from Wal-mart. You'll regret it.
Milestones: I think I finally look more pregnant than fat, so that's cause to rejoice.

15 weeks and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall's weeeeeeeeeell.

Five weeks since the last statistical update? I guess it's true what they say about the second kid getting short shrift. That makes me sad. :(


Weight difference between pictures = 0. Where did it all come from, I ask you?

How far along? 15 weeks.
Total weight gain/loss: Pennsylvania put a couple pounds on me, I guess, bringing me to a net gain of zero.
Maternity clothes? Hell yes. Did you SEE that picture up there? No way my old pants are fitting.
Stretch marks? Nein nein nein.
Sleep: Crappy. It's starting to be hard to sleep on my back, and sleeping on my stomach is totally out of the question, and sides are just uncomfortable without three times as many pillows as I currently own.
Best moment this week: Getting HOME (cat pee and dead chickens and mold notwithstanding).
Movement: I swear I've felt some fluttering around, but 15 weeks is still kind of early for that. I'm going to chalk it up to imagination for a couple more weeks.
Food cravings: Fruit fruit fruit. Also ice cream.
Gender: No idea, but we can find out SOON. Need to call and schedule that, actually.
Labor Signs: Nej.
Belly Button in or out? In, and not going anywhere.
What I miss: Sleeping on my back.
What I am looking forward to: Acknowledging fetal movement without feeling like a crazy with a hyperactive imagination.
Weekly Wisdom: If you go camping while pregnant, bring an air mattress, or at least a foam pad or something. My back is STILL killing me.
Milestones: Well, we entered the second trimester while I was gone, so that's something, yes?


For comparison's sake: Fifteen Weeks with Big Jim.

Stories!

Guten Tag, meine Damen und Herren. First off, pictures/tales from our visit to PA last week are coming, but I've got about 6 gigs of pictures to sort first, so it's gonna take a while. For now, please enjoy these tales of Jim from the past couple of days.

"HOUSE!"
Or, to be more accurate, "houf!" Jim has fallen completely in love with his Megablocks set. He's progressed from building tall towers of single bricks to massive structures using every block in the set. When finished, he stands up and announces, "Uh oh! Houf!" and demands that I come over and "see houf!" He's started taking it a step farther, too. In addition to simply pointing out the beauty of his houf, he will now point out the precise locations of the 'do' and 'webbow' (door and window, you see). Last night he even went so far as to "knock knock knock" on the door, but he restrained himself to just saying and miming it, so as not to knock down the whole magnificent structure.

"SAR!"
We went back to the speech pathologist yesterday, and according to her, Jim is "AMAZING." His speech progress is huge in the last couple of weeks (as you may be able to tell by all the words in quotes here), but what really impressed her was his vast knowledge of geometry. At one point, he pulled a star-shaped something out of the toy box, announced unprompted that it was a "sar," and then proceeded to place it on top of a star-shaped hole in a different toy. I wasn't aware that this was weird, but it flabbergasted the poor lady. Apparently being able to point to shapes when asked is good for this age, being able to say the name unprompted is VERY good, and being able to match it up with the same shape in a different context is positively astounding. No offense to the grandparents who have been saying this all along, but hearing that your kid is a genius from a stranger with a lot of degrees is totally more impressive.

"BOOTS!"
In Jim-speak, "boots" means "broken," and that's what he declared his bed to be after Noah turned it from a crib into a toddler bed last night. Fortunately, he got over his disapproval pretty fast and went to bed in it without a fuss, despite the missing side. All was going well (maternal sniffling at his big-boy-bed notwithstanding) until we heard a huge THUMP! several hours later. So we raced upstairs, heads filled with thoughts of concussions or broken limbs or at the very least some mental trauma, but what did we find upon opening the door? Jim, of course, lying on the floor beside his bed snoring like the world's noisiest weed-eater. We just tucked his blanket around him and backed out of the room. As of this morning, no harm seems to be done. He even let me sleep in an extra hours while he wandered around his room doing whatever it is toddlers do.

Speech, and the lack thereof.

Still has his baby blues, you see.

While he's been picking up a few more words lately (boo, gee, o-eej: can you guess the translations?), Jim is still definitely behind on the verbal communication front, so off we went today to see the speech pathologist again. Noah even got to come along this time, since it fit conveniently between several of his complicated military obligations.



Aaaaand it went really well. Jim was adorable and charming, as per usual, and the SP (I'm too lazy to type 'speech pathologist' every other sentence, so bear with me) was terribly nice. She was suitably impressed by Jim's impressive attention span and language comprehension (both of which are apparently advanced), and even more impressed that he knows his colors, animals, counting (to five, on his fingers), etc. Apparently he's totally ahead of the game in everything except actually, y'know, getting the words out.



Turns out, however, that the gap between his comprehension/knowledge and speaking ability is worrisome. I suppose we kind of figured that, which is why we were there in the first place, but it still sucks to hear. He's still not really using many consonents, and the ones that he does have don't seem to be totally at his command. The SP thinks the problem is somewhere between low muscle tone in his his facial muscles, as evidenced by him sitting with his mouth open quite a bit, and just a general lack of ability to make consonant sounds at will. He can make the sounds, but not necessarily whenever he WANTS to make them.



So, ol' Jim's got some homework. She gave us some flashcards and a list of consonants to practice, and we're supposed to help him learn to say one-syllable words beginning with b, d, t, and m, with the idea that building up his vocabulary of words with those sounds will help him form those sounds more easily and say more of the words that he already understands. We'll be going back to see her every 2-3 weeks, and she'll be giving us bigger scarier phonemes (look out for *drumroll* fricatives!) in the future, plus more complicated exercises once he's old enough to understand them, if he still needs help at that point. Hopefully the problem will be taken care of by then, but I'm glad we've got someone with a lot of fancy degrees to help us if we need it.

One year, two years.

Left to right: ten days before birth, the day after birth, around a year old, exactly two years old.

It's funny to see how babyish one-year-old Jim looks to me now. I remember thinking at the time that he looked like a big grown-up kid already. Wonder what two-year-old Jim will look like to me next year?

Anyway, you guys remember those seated-with-bear pictures I used to take of Jim every month? I took (or tried to take) a few of those on his second birthday, and I completely forgot about them until I was browsing through my pictures just now. Have a look:


This is one-year-old Jim, looking suitably maniacal while sitting with his bear.


Now here is two-year-old Jim, looking equally maniacal.


His only attempt at looking cuddly.


Getting impatient with this sitting crap.


Seriously, are we done here?


Diving to freedom.


One-year-old Jim standing.


Two-year-old Jim standing.


Look how long his legs are.


Bonus 1: He hugs an unwilling Doofy cat.


Bonus 2: He squats with much more ease than I can.


Bonus 3: Aaaaangry eyes.

Stats.

It's been a couple weeks since I did any record-keeping, and I need to start doing it regularly. Mostly just so I can compare with last time. I figure if I keep good records, I just need to have about a hundred more pregnancies to get a decent sample size, and then I can draw some conclusions.

How far along? 10 weeks (and three days)
Total weight gain/loss: Two pounds down. Appetite = gone.
Maternity clothes? I dug out my maternity clothes this week, but I just wasn't prepared for how gargantuan I look in them. It's too early to look that big, dammit. So I'm holding off for at least another couple weeks.
Stretch marks? No new ones.
Sleep: Better. Well, the sleep isn't better, but I'm not as tired, so that's okay.
Best moment this week: Having several consecutive moments of not-being-sick.
Movement: Nope.
Food cravings: Orange creamsicles, fresh lemonade. Remarkably close to my ten week update with Jim (see below) - maybe it's another boy?
Gender: Thinking boy.
Labor Signs: Nyet.
Belly Button in or out? In. Permanently. I hope.
What I miss: Getting my heartrate up.
What I am looking forward to: Being far enough along that I feel okay looking pregnant. I want stretchy pants. :(
Weekly Wisdom: None. I am devoid of smart things to say.
Milestones: 10 weeks is 25%. That's... a lot of percent. Nooooot ready yet.


For comparison: Ten Weeks Along with Buckethead

Water baby.

Outside, Jim discovered his other present: a leetle pool.


He liked it.


He especially liked filling it.


Also: balloons!


He was terribly impatient for these and kept huffing and puffing while we blew them up for him.


But once he had them he was duly grateful.


Yellow balloon is best balloon.


Oh no, where'd it go? If you look closely, you can see the lower lip trembling.


Noah retrieves.


He looks sweet enough, but really he's just planning to throw it out again.


Full complement of balloons.


Noah loves balloons as much as Jim does.


We're laughing; Jim is dumbfounded. I don't know why. (ignore the boobage, can't be helped)


SPLASH.


Splash cont'd.


Noah tried to get Jim to partake in some flutter kicks until we started pointing out the shapeliness of his legs.


But he still persevered, and there was much splashing, and Jim was quite proud.

The End.