Guess What??

Chicken Butt!

Haha, we got a book from the library last week called Chicken Butt.  Ingrid thinks it's funny to say "You know what?  heehee, chickbutt!"  I love toddlers' senses of humor.

But no, seriously, the guess what is for this--we're ready to try for #2!!  This weekend, the weekend of crabiness and yelling, we actually had a conversation about babies.  Brendan always thinks we should wait.  With Ingrid he wanted to wait until he was done with school, which I am so glad I would not agree to, seeing as Ingrid was almost one by the time he was actually done.  This time he wanted to wait until he got a job.  I said cool, it'll be this spring.  Then he decided to stay at his job another year, so I figured we could start now.  He kept saying later, later, in the fall.  Why?  Who knows. 

And I am always the one that says no, let's just go for it now.  Especially after having Ingrid at the time we did.  We thought Brendan would have one year of grad school left, and that it would take six months or so for me to get pregnant.  I have PCOS so I thought it would take forever.  With that thinking, we started trying the summer before Brendan's last year of school.  I got pregnant on the first try, and he had to stay in school an extra semester.  We lived with his parents and it was crazy, but you know what?  I wouldn't change it.  We had a great support system for the first few months, it made us really ready to move on from Milwaukee and try something new, and I honestly don't know how it would've been to be in our own place with a newborn.  It was nice to have his parents pop in upstairs every once in awhile.

So now, of course I was thinking the day he figured he'd stay another year that we could start trying for baby #2.  You know, I'll get pregnant this spring, have a baby in late winter, and then we can move with a 2 1/2 year old and a newborn next spring.  Instead of having a 2 1/2 year old and being insanely hugely pregnant...And saying that made Brendan realize, once again, that I'm right :)  So we're trying.  Hooray!

It's funny how much Ingrid picks up on things.  Every time we see a baby I say oh, don't you want a baby?  You could be a big sister!  You could be my helper and sing to the baby!  So after her nap today she says "Mama, I need to be a big sister.  I need to sing Rockabye Baby to the baby."  Ha!  I'm totally brainwashing my child into thinking she needs a sibling.  Hopefully she'll still feel that way if we get one!

Can You All Just Stop, Please?

Hey everyone, quit having babies!  I swear to god, the past couple weeks every single blog I follow has had a post saying Mama is preggo...Not that I'm not happy for you all, because I am!  But I'd be a whole lot happier if I were at least trying myself.

Brendan is in the process of applying for jobs.  He is stressed out.  He is only 90% sure he wants another one.  So, we are talking about baby #2 once he gets a job, maybe.  It's kind of driving me nuts, I want to just start trying now.  He's going to get a job, I mean, he's got a phd in chemistry.  He'll get a job!  So I'll just be a few months pregnant when we move, no biggie. 

Can you tell I have no patience?  Which is funny since my mind changes a lot about having another one.  It's pretty much set to baby #2 though, especially after the other day when Ingrid saw a baby in a stroller and was all like "hi baby!  hi baby!"  I can just imagine her with li'l bro or sis, being the big helper. 

So yeah, we're a few months away from even being able to try and it's driving me crazy.  We got lucky with Ingrid, she was our first try.  But I just have this feeling we won't be so lucky next time.  Which is silly, because I didn't think I could even get pregnant and we did right away--why not the second time around, too??  I'm an impatient worrywart, such a great combination...

So anyone who's pregnant, I am happy for you!  I'm just going to be crabby about it until it's my turn :)  Sorry.

Growing Up Too Quickly...

I feel like Ingrid is growing up too quickly.  Everything seems to have flown by.  She's not even two yet and already she's this little chatterbox who's singing full songs and telling us she needs to go to the bathroom.  Where'd my baby go?? 

She has been going on the potty all day today, no diapers except just now when I put her down for her nap.  We even went on a walk and she stayed dry and went when we got home!  We're totally following her lead, she just started to tell us she had to go, so we bring her.  And she goes.  And gets the hugest smile on her face, you can tell how proud of herself she is!  It's amazing!

And singing, oh man.  That kid loves to sing!  She likes the Five Little Monkeys song right now, and can sing pretty much every word.  And Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, although you can't understand half the words she says.  She gets the tune right, though. 

She also talks in full sentences and is pretty good at articulating her words.  Some kind of run together but mostly you can understand her. 

She's not a baby...

I am proud of her for doing all these things, for counting to 10 and saying her ABCs and reciting her books, but I feel like it's all happening too quickly.  I want to have a cuddly baby still!  She was so behind on crawling and walking, and then bam, she went full force from baby to preschooler!  At least that's how it seems sometimes.

But, because she's almost out of diapers and finally pretty much sleeping through the night (until her teeth want to bother her again I suppose) I feel ready for baby #2.  When we visited our friend and I had her baby and then had Ingrid hanging on me, I swore up and down I didn't want that and I was staying with one kid.  Yesterday those friends came over, and the baby is now 6 months old.  Ingrid went right up and said "Hi, cute baby!" and was all in her face.  I wanted to try out the mei tai I'd made so I strapped the baby in, and it felt so good!  And Ingrid was hanging on my leg but I was imagining it for real and it didn't scare me so much.  I know it would be hard, but I feel like I can see past the first few months of it being that way to when it would be a little easier as the baby grows, and as Ingrid grows. 

And then that baby will grow up too quickly and I'll sigh and wonder where the time went...

Daily Life in the Liddle house

I feel like I've been missing for awhile. It just seems like nothing has been going on. Ingrid and I are home most of the time, as Brendan takes the car to work. It's been going well, the whole one car thing. I like to be home most of the time. I tend to get more stuff done that way.

Ingrid has been so cute lately, her vocabulary has exploded! She sings along to songs now, which is super adorable :) Life with her revolves around blocks (the best thing I got from swapmamas, for sure!) her play kitchen, and coloring. Those are the only three things she wants to do. Brendan and I have fun making the most ridiculous towers possible, which is more fun than I thought it would be.

I've been getting a lot of sewing done. I got a pattern for baby shoes and have now made three pairs. They were difficult to do the first time but now I think I have the hang of it. They look so cute, it's hard not to imagine a little baby wearing them...

Which of course brings us to our family and whether we'll expand it or not. Of course. I have been pro-baby #2 and talking about it probably too much. Asking Ingrid if she wants a baby brother or sister, as if she has any idea what that means! Looking through the baby name book, imagining what names would go well with Ingrid (Felix? Alister? Harriet?) Making baby shoes and thinking I shouldn't sell them but save them for my own child.

But, like last time, we're just not in the right place yet. According to Brendan...He is finishing up his fellowship and we are planning on moving in the next few months for his new job, wherever that may be. And we want to buy a house in the next couple years, too, so there are so many factors in our lives that are up in the air. I'm sure it's the sane, rational, adult thing to wait until we figure some of them out, but my hormones say otherwise.

*sigh*

We'll see. Story of my life. When are you moving? We'll see. Where are you moving? We'll see. What job will Brendan get? We'll see.

Baby Fever

Yesterday I went nuts cleaning and rearranging the furniture. I moved the dresser from Ingrid's room, which meant I had to put all her stuff somewhere else, I moved a couch, I organized closets. It was insane. During all this madness I came across three things that induced a severe case of baby fever.

Number one: a packet of pictures my friend had taken throughout my pregnancy. It starts at 14 weeks where I actually look better than I do now (sad but true...) and goes all the way to 38 weeks when I'm rockin' a bikini. I just love pregnant bellies! I have always had a flabby belly so being pregnant was the only time I've ever liked my shape, because I didn't have to suck it in!!

Number two: my journal from that year. It starts a few months before I got pregnant, when I was so worried I wouldn't be able to get pregnant, when I was talking about Clomid and adoption, when I was worrying over the timing with Brendan finishing school and all. Then there's the time when I was pregnant but didn't know it, to the day I simply wrote "4:30am, two blue lines. I'm pregnant. Holy s**t!!" And then throughout the pregnancy, feeling the baby move for the first time, finding out it was a girl, all the names we called her before settling on Ingrid. And finally up to the week before she was born where all I could think about was getting her the hell out of me so I could meet her already!!

Number three: teeny tiny baby clothes. I went through all her clothes to see what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to get rid of and all these memories just came flooding back from when she was that small. Oh, small babies, you are so cute! Ingrid is definitely more fun now than when she was a tiny lump of baby, but she was pretty darn cute as a four month old...

So all in all I'm having major baby fever. And yet at the same time I'm so excited for my etsy store having opened (and I got my first order!) that I can totally see just having Ingrid and starting to really focus on a business. It's a blessing and a curse that I can see the positives of most things, I swear to god.