very. far. behind.

very busy. very tired. will catch up eventually, i promise.

roo-2: 12 weeks

i remember this one from last time around. i think this is where we started these with roo-1. from babycenter.com: The most dramatic development this week: reflexes. Your baby's fingers will soon begin to open and close, his toes will curl, his eye muscles will clench, and his mouth will make sucking movements. In fact, if you prod your abdomen, your baby will squirm in response, although you won't be able to feel it. His intestines, which have grown so fast that they protrude into the umbilical cord, will start to move into his abdominal cavity about now, and his kidneys will begin excreting urine into his bladder.Meanwhile, nerve cells are multiplying rapidly, and in your baby's brain, synapses are forming furiously. His face looks unquestionably human: His eyes have moved from the sides to the front of his head, and his ears are right where they should be. From crown to rump, your baby-to-be is just over 2 inches long (about the size of a lime) and weighs half an ounce.

winter wonderland

attempt #2 to play in the snow was much more successful than attempt #1 a few weeks ago. quentin was very interested in the snow and wanted to take his mittens off to touch it.

disappointment

quentin normally goes to his gym class on saturdays, but given that there is ~ a foot of snow on the ground and it is STILL snowing we assumed that class would be canceled. we called when we got up this morning and learned that class was still on! jeremy went out and shoveled enough of the driveway so that we could get out. i got Q dressed and ready to go. the roads were pretty horrendous but we made it to the gym just fine. but we saw the gym director getting in to his car. he came over and told us that he had to close after all because none of the staff could get in and the roads were a lot worse than he thought. despite not speaking much english, quentin knew exactly what mr. dave just said and started screaming and crying. he knew exactly where he was and he wanted to go to his gym. poor little guy. we felt so bad. he looked heartbroken. but i guess it is a feeling he should get used to, growing up in a wake forest family. i mean, we'll all be disappointed in just a matter of hours when the deacs lose to navy in the lamest bowl game there is.

roo-2: 11 weeks

another week down, still tired and nauseous. i'm hoping we're nearly done with both. we went out to a nice lunch yesterday at work and i had to order plain pasta. really classy. i'll also admit that i am wearing a pair of maternity pants today. i only have three pairs of regular pants that still fit and they're all in the wash. the maternity pants are loose, but way more comfortable than a waistband digging in to me all day.

from babycenter.com:

Your baby, just over 1 1/2 inches long and about the size of a fig, is now almost fully formed. Her hands will soon open and close into fists, tiny tooth buds are beginning to appear under her gums, and some of her bones are beginning to harden. She's already busy kicking and stretching, and her tiny movements are so effortless they look like water ballet. These movements will become more frequent as her body grows and becomes more developed and functional. You won't feel your baby's acrobatics for another month or two — nor will you notice the hiccupping that may be happening now that her diaphragm is forming.

in other news, they started putting up our fence yesterday (finally!), though the first part they did is all wrong and will have to be redone. oh well. actual fence will be done soon, maybe as early as monday depending how this snow goes...

and about that... there's already a ton on the ground (6+ inches? it's hard to tell because of the wind) and it's still going. and there's another storm coming sunday. good times.

santa's lap: take two

since the first attempt at santa's lap did not succeed we took Q to the mall this past saturday to try again. again he was tired and cranky and hadn't napped. don't know why we thought we'd get better results this time :)

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mall santa place at least does digital photos rather than polaroids so she did take three pics - and sadly this was the best one. we had the honor of paying $20 for this gem.

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santa's lap: take two = FAIL

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3rd time's a charm?

santa's lap: take 1

last week my office had a holiday party for the kids. i was on the planning committee so poor Q got there 4 hours early to help set up. needless to say, by the time it was santa time, Q wanted out. he was so tired and cranky. he wasn't screaming or crying, just not interested. santa's lap: take 1 = FAIL.

roo-2: 10 weeks

roo 2 is a kumquat, though i admit, i wasn't exactly sure what a kumquat was! no big changes this week. still nauseous most of the time. i was stuck at the richmond airport for a while yesterday and we decided to eat at applebee's. there was nothing on their menu that even remotely appealed to me but i had to eat so i went with chicken tenders. oh boy did i regret that. it definitely didn't help that it was wicked rainy and windy so our flight was bumpy. i was this close to having to use the barf bag. ugh. and it is never a good thing when your pilot comes on the speaker to say, "sorry about that folks, we're going to have to make another attempt at landing. air traffic control got us a little bit too close to the plane in front of us." nice. from babycenter.com: Though he's barely the size of a kumquat — a little over an inch or so long, crown to bottom — and weighs less than a quarter of an ounce, your baby has now completed the most critical portion of his development. This is the beginning of the so-called fetal period, a time when the tissues and organs in his body rapidly grow and mature. He's swallowing fluid and kicking up a storm. Vital organs — including his kidneys, intestines, brain, and liver (now making red blood cells in place of the disappearing yolk sac) — are in place and starting to function, though they'll continue to develop throughout your pregnancy. If you could take a peek inside your womb, you'd spot minute details, like tiny nails forming on fingers and toes (no more webbing) and peach-fuzz hair beginning to grow on tender skin. In other developments: Your baby's limbs can bend now. His hands are flexed at the wrist and meet over his heart, and his feet may be long enough to meet in front of his body. The outline of his spine is clearly visible through translucent skin, and spinal nerves are beginning to stretch out from his spinal cord. Your baby's forehead temporarily bulges with his developing brain and sits very high on his head, which measures half the length of his body. From crown to rump, he's about 1 1/4 inches long. In the coming weeks, your baby will again double in size — to nearly 3 inches. At your next prenatal visit, you may be able to hear your baby's rapid heartbeat with the help of a Doppler stethoscope, a handheld ultrasound device that your practitioner places on your belly. Many women say that the beating of their baby's tiny heart sounded like the thunder of galloping horses and hearing it for the first time was very moving. Before you got pregnant, your uterus was the size of a small pear. By this week, it's as big as a grapefruit. You may or may not be ready for maternity wear now. Even if you're not there yet, your regular clothes are probably feeling uncomfortably tight and your blossoming breasts are straining the seams of your bra. The thickening in your midsection is most likely due to slight weight gain and bloating. If you're between regular and maternity clothes, pants and skirts with forgiving elastic waistbands (or low-rise waistlines that sit below your belly) will provide some much-needed comfort.

Check-out my mohawk

Quentin decided if everyone else is getting a mohawk, why can't I? Despite the fact he still mostly bald, the hair he does have is growing long enough to style. I think I'll give him the mohawk when he goes to see Santa :)

snow bunny

the first snow of the year is here! there's a few inches on the ground, so i HAD to dress quentin up in his little snow ensemble and take him out. i thought he would love it, but i guess it was too close to nap time because he was not amused. we stayed out long enough to snap a few pics of a pissed off toddler and then came back in. maybe we'll try again later.

roo-2: 9 weeks

a grape! my ultrasound appointment went fine today. i waited in the waiting area for over an hour, because despite the fact that i checked in when i got there, they never put me on the list for ultrasound. but once i inquired, they got me right in there. tracking right at 9 weeks, where i should be, so our due date was not changed. i couldn't get photos though, because both of their ultrasound printers were busted. i go back on the 29th and should be able to get copies then.

from babycenter.com:

Your new resident is nearly an inch long — about the size of a grape — and weighs just a fraction of an ounce. She's starting to look more and more human. Her essential body parts are accounted for, though they'll go through plenty of fine-tuning in the coming months. Other changes abound: Your baby's heart finishes dividing into four chambers, and the valves start to form — as do her tiny teeth. The embryonic "tail" is completely gone. Your baby's organs, muscles, and nerves are kicking into gear. The external sex organs are there but won't be distinguishable as male or female for another few weeks. Her eyes are fully formed, but her eyelids are fused shut and won't open until 27 weeks. She has tiny earlobes, and her mouth, nose, and nostrils are more distinct. The placenta is developed enough now to take over most of the critical job of producing hormones. Now that your baby's basic physiology is in place, she's poised for rapid weight gain.

coming attraction

in theaters near you july 10, 2009

Fun at the Gym

Thursday is one of the days Q's "gym" has free play where the kids can just do whatever they want. Luckily I was post-call today and had the afternoon free. Q had a great time especially in the ball pit. You can also see he has a nice cut under his right eye. He fell into the wall today at daycare :(

Happy Holidays

Hope everyone had a nice thanksgiving. Quentin made this at daycare last week. I think they used pudding or something. The other kids did not quite get into it as much as my son did. He loves to make a mess!

first appointment

my first appointment took forever, but went well. mass general does not do ultrasounds until 18-20 weeks - weird. but we did the whole medical history, physical exam, etc, as well as the pee in a cup, step on the scale, and check my blood pressure thing that will be the regular routine. blood pressure is good so far - yeah! doctor said i'm measuring big based on the physical exam. she tried to get the heartbeat with the doppler thingy but couldn't (usually can't until 10 or 11 weeks.) so now she wants to do an ultrasound on friday to get a better due date reading. so i go back for a second time this week. ugh - they also took 8 vials of blood. but fortunately the blood guy listened to me about my trusty hand vein being way better than my arm veins so it went relatively painlessly.

roo-2: 8 weeks

i finally go to the doctor this week - yeah! i am still hit and miss with the nausea. some days i feel totally fine, others i feel terrible. at least we will be able to tell people soon enough :)

from babycenter.com:

Webbed fingers and toes are poking out from your baby's hands and feet, his eyelids practically cover his eyes, breathing tubes extend from his throat to the branches of his developing lungs, and his "tail" is just about gone. In his brain, nerve cells are branching out to connect with one another, forming primitive neural pathways. You may be daydreaming about your baby as one sex or the other, but the external genitals still haven't developed enough to reveal whether you're having a boy or a girl. Either way, your baby — about the size of a kidney bean — is constantly moving and shifting, though you still can't feel it.

me too

quentin's new nickname at day care is "me too." he has to be wherever the "big boys" are, doing whatever they are doing. the big boys do not appreciate their new follower. nick says to quentin, "no baby, mine," several times a day, as quentin tries to get in on whatever nick is playing with. the two new babies have not started coming to day care yet, so Q is still the baby for a little while longer.

photos of a fidgety boy

we took Q to babies r us last night to get his 15-month pictures taken. despite having pre-scheduled an appointment, it took over an hour before it was our turn to go. Q went from being ok, to being super fidgety. one-year-olds are not good waiters. all this waiting for 7 minutes, yes only 7, of picture-taking. they came out ok, i guess, but they are not my favorite pics ever. i felt like the photographer was rushing because they were so behind and the store was going to close in like 10 minutes. plus Q did not want to sit still. oh well.

nooooooooooooooooooooo

Q has a new favorite word. all weekend long: "nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo." we're not even sure he really gets it, but he certainly enjoys saying it.

roo-2: 7 weeks

another week down, a whole bunch more to go. i have now graduated to intermittent nausea and a complete lack of interest in eating. i am hungry, but i just can't think of anything that won't make me want to hurl. even when i think i've come up with something "safe", i make it, take one whiff, and have to throw it away. good times. thanksgiving should be loads of fun!

roo-2 is a blueberry. i could go for a nice blueberry smoothie. too bad there are no smoothie places near our house.

i had my pre-appointment medical history phone call today. the nurse asked me all kinds of questions about Q's birth, like when did my water break, that i just couldn't answer. still don't know that. also weird - mass general apparently does not do an 8-week ultrasound. they only do one, at 18-20 weeks unless you do all the optional genetic testing, then they do one at 11-14 weeks. weird.

from babycenter.com:

The big news this week: Hands and feet are emerging from developing arms and legs — although they look more like paddles at this point than the tiny, pudgy extremities you're daydreaming about holding and tickling. Technically, your baby is still considered an embryo and has something of a small tail, which is an extension of her tailbone. The tail will disappear within a few weeks, but that's the only thing getting smaller. Your baby has doubled in size since last week and now measures half an inch long, about the size of a blueberry. If you could see inside your womb, you'd spot eyelid folds partially covering her peepers, which already have some color, as well as the tip of her nose and tiny veins beneath parchment-thin skin. Both hemispheres of your baby's brain are growing, and her liver is churning out red blood cells until her bone marrow forms and takes over this role. She also has an appendix and a pancreas, which will eventually produce the hormone insulin to aid in digestion. A loop in your baby's growing intestines is bulging into her umbilical cord, which now has distinct blood vessels to carry oxygen and nutrients to and from her tiny body.

free play at the gym

As Keira mentioned in the last post, Q now belongs to a kiddie gym. Two hours a week they have free play where the kids can just play with all the stuff. Ours has Tuesdays from 1230-130 and Thursdays 3-4. Anywho, I was on call last night and we finished rounding at a reasonable time so that I could potentially get Q from daycare and take him to free play. I got there in plenty of time and we had a great time. Q has become an expert climber as you can see from the pictures. He enjoyed climbing up the slide backwards and climbing a ladder to get to the slide. I was so surprised how easily he could climb a ladder. Nothing in our house is safe anymore!

interesante

i can't eat most things without wanting to hurl, yet i can eat mexican food. hmmmm.

baby gym class

over the past few months, we have realized that quentin has a ton of energy. the boy can go and go and go. and now that it is always cold and dark outside, running around the yard to wear him out is no longer an option. and his play area in the cellar is nice, but it gets cold down there as well preventing extended play times. we had pretty much resigned ourselves to running laps around the first floor of our house, chasing him as he runs. then we found it. i saw a commercial for My Gym - a kiddie gym with classes for babes as young as 6 weeks! on saturday we took him to a free trial class to see if this might be a good fit for him. quentin is a "waddler" (14-22 months) but the class we can actually attend on saturday mornings is a "tiny tykes" (7-13 months) and waddlers combo. he had a blast. they did a nice mix of structured activities and free play and always kept the kids moving. they do "circle time" with singing and hand movements to develop fine motor skills. quentin also got to swing on a trapeze, climb up a log cabin, walk on a balance beam, swing, and more. we learned that he is fearless and these classes are a good thing for him. so we are now full-fledged members. we figured it is a good way for him to expend some energy and interact with kiddies his own age. our membership entitles us to one class and one "free play" hour a week. most of the other waddlers classes and free plays are during work hours, but between jeremy's weird work schedule and my upcoming holiday vacation days, i think he'll be able to get to a bunch of them.

roo-2: 6 weeks

lentil! getting so big already! still feeling pretty ok, though i do have moments of nausea. i am just waiting for it to kick in all the way.

from babycenter.com:

This week's major developments: The nose, mouth, and ears that you'll spend so much time kissing in eight months are beginning to take shape. If you could see into your uterus, you'd find an oversize head and dark spots where your baby's eyes and nostrils are starting to form. His emerging ears are marked by small depressions on the sides of the head, and his arms and legs by protruding buds. His heart is beating about 100 to 160 times a minute — almost twice as fast as yours — and blood is beginning to course through his body. His intestines are developing, and the bud of tissue that will give rise to his lungs has appeared. His pituitary gland is forming, as are the rest of his brain, muscles, and bones. Right now, your baby is a quarter of an inch long, about the size of a lentil bean.

security!

quentin has officially declared a security blanket. "blueberry" is never far from his side. he has one at day care and two more here, just in case. you can't tell from this picture, but blueberry is a bear / blanket. i think he likes the bear part ok, but really digs the satin.

15 month check-up

quentin had his 15-month appointment on election day. he is doing well, right on track. here are the stats:

• height: 31 and 1/4" (55th percentile)
• weight: 25 pounds, 12 ounces (68th percentile)
• head: 47.8 cm (68th percentile)

i'm guessing we have a growth spurt coming soon. he's got the little pot belly he gets right before he gets taller :)

sooooooo big

quentin demonstrates one of his favorite games: "how big are you?" "sooooo big"

he also shows how he eats a peanut butter sandwich... messily.