New House through Kate's Eyes

We've been in our new house a little more than a week, and with all the unpacking (plus working all week, of course) I haven't taken many pics of the new place yet--but Kate sure has! She recently learned how to turn on the camera function on our smartphones, and goes around snapping pictures of us, the house, her feet, the floor, and sometimes her finger in front of the lens.

So here's the last few days in our new house, through Kate's (sometimes blurry) lens.

Here's part of our kitchen, over the top of Mommy's bowl of yogurt.

Nala and Popi came to visit for the weekend to see our new place and help us get set up. Here, Popi and Daddy eat breakfast at the kitchen table, which overlooks the backyard and the living room (over the little half-wall behind Popi).

Nala pours some coffee by the sink. Those bar stools sit at the island--one of the things I really wanted in a house. I have fond memories of doing my homework at the island and talking to Mom while she made dinner. I hope Kate and I will do the same in years to come!

 And here's Mommy, wearing Daddy's Butler sweatshirt she loves...

 ... and doing a little work on Ministry Matters (if you or someone you love is a church leader, check it out!)

The house backs right up to the neighborhood pool and playground, which is awesome (except when Kate is screaming to go outside or to the "wimming pool" when we can't). We'll miss the wild turkeys that came through our yard in Clarksville, but this neighborhood seems to be teeming with bunnies, so they are fun to see too!

And this shot is really blurry, but gives a little glimpse of our living room. It took Matt four hours to put that TV hutch together! We're still waiting for our new couch and coffee table to arrive, so right now, we either lay on the rug or squeeze into the armchair.

 We still have some unpacking to do, but we're on our way, and I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse!

I'm four months along today, so I'm sure I'll post again soon. Hope you all have a happy Memorial Day weekend!

First E.R. Visit

Wild as Kate is, Matt and I assumed Kate's first visit to the Emergency Room would be for stitches. Not so, as we experienced our first panicked hospital trip today. Not the kind where you throw the child in the car and speed there yourself, but the kind where you get a call that your child is being sent in an ambulance and you're 50 miles away!

Let me start at the beginning...

Today was Kate's last day at her current day care, as today was closing day for our house and then we move on Friday (yay!!) so I had my camera with me to capture a few shots of her with her first school friends.

 She arrived in style, in her newly-turned-around car seat, and joined her class of rowdy two-year olds

and Matt and I went on to Nashville, where I worked a half day before Matt picked me up at noon. We grabbed lunch at Wendy's, and just as we were gathering our garbage to head off to the closing, the phone rang.

It was the director of the day care, saying Kate was having a lot of trouble breathing. She'd woken up from her nap with a croupy cough and couldn't catch her breath, was grabbing at her throat, etc. At first it seemed they thought Matt should just come pick her up and go to the pediatrician (they know he's usually local, while I work far away) but upon realizing he was in Nashville too, they said they needed to call an ambulance. Panicked, we told our realtor, etc., that we wouldn't be able to close today, and headed back to Clarksville as quickly as we could.

The director called us again on our way to say Kate was sitting up in the ambulance, getting a breathing treatment, and she was doing fine. So, we unclenched a bit and didn't worry quite as much the rest of the way. When we arrived, Kate was sitting there in the hospital bed, in her own clothes (that comforted me, since I wondered if she'd be in a hospital gown), being calm and sweet. The day care director and assistant were there with her, and she had her naptime blanket and a stuffed puppy they'd grabbed for her to hold. She wanted the pulse-reader-thing that was taped to her finger off, but otherwise, was very calm.

We joked that she had to make a grand exit on her last day, and the teachers actually said an ambulance had been there just hours before for a show-and-tell sort of thing--Kate must have decided she wanted to ride in that thing! That, or she just really doesn't want us to move to a new house!

The diagnosis was croup, which she's had before. We've done the take-her-out-into-the-cold-night-air thing and she gets better, but this was apparently much worse than those incidents. She also has a somewhat chronic cough (though it's actually seemed better lately), so we've wondered about athsma, but they didn't seem to think that was the problem. All we know is we're not letting doctors write it off as "the beginnings of a sinus infection" anymore! They gave Kate a chest x-ray (she did great!), another breathing treatment (she flipped out!), and a steroid to help open her airways. The steroid would have been painless if she'd been willing to drink it in apple juice, but she refused, so she had to get two shots. She's a trooper, though.

She even felt good enough to "help" with the packing this evening, and is sleeping soundly with a brand new humidifier!

Messy Mother's Day

Kate and my Mother's Day tradition (all two years of it) has been to go to Starbucks before church and enjoy some girl time. This year, I was even going to be delivering the sermon, at Matt's request. (Nothing fancy, it was basically a compilation and expansion of these two blog posts about what motherhood has taught me about God.)

But then Kate woke up at 2 and 3 in the morning throwing up, and kept it up a few more times after sunrise (once ALL over me--fun fun), so we decided she needed to stay home. Matt read my message for me while I stayed home with a subdued and cuddly toddler. Watching some Abby and Elmo (or A&E to make her sound a little more refined) and a nice long nap on the couch perked her up enough for us to go out for Chinese that evening.

And while she slept, I packed a few boxes in preparation for our move in less than two weeks! Our house is so messy right now, with the living room full of boxes. Shelves are getting barer, and yet there still seems to be so much more to pack!

Kate doesn't really get the concept of "moving," I'm sure, though I think the changes are making her uneasy. When I moved some chairs in the dining room to make room for more boxes, she emphatically told me, "no, Mommy!!" When I ask if she's excited to go to the pool a lot this summer in our new neighborhood, she says, "no!" When I tell her, "You're going to have a big girl bed in our new house!" she says, "no!"

That said, she has decided she is done with the crib (perfect timing!), preferring to sleep on the couch, on her mattress on the floor, or on the floor itself... or in this case, on a box of books (just for a minute).

So, we're getting all the fun of putting her back in "bed" numerous times at bedtime, and corraling her back to bed when she decides to wander around at one in the morning!

Monday night, Matt and I came down with Kate's stomach bug. Me first, and Kate got out of bed every time I threw up to stand there in the bathroom (right by her room) and say "Mommy's sick" over and over, as she does when I have my usual nausea. And given that I threw up just about every hour, it was especially tough getting her to stay in bed that night. Then Matt started getting sick about 3 in the morning, and we were both sick, sore, and tired the next day. (Thank you, Granna and Opa for providing emergency child care so we could recuperate!)

So that was our messy Mother's Day and its aftermath. How was yours?

Three Months

I'm three months along now (14 weeks, to be exact) and into the second trimester!

When people hear I've been sick a lot, they often say, "that should ease up soon," and I never buy it since I was sick the whole time with Kate. I have been throwing up less often, though (maybe 3-4 days a week rather than 6-7). I'm still afraid to get my hopes up, though, because I think it was around 14 weeks with Kate that I went a whole week without puking and was so excited, and of course, no sooner had I celebrated and announced that fact, I threw up. So, who knows?

I'm starting to wear some maternity clothes, since my normal pants are way too tight. I've been doing the rubber band trick (around the button, through the buttonhole) for a while to help my normal pants be wearable, and that still works for some of them. I found a few pairs of "fat pants" in the yard sale box when Matt and I were getting ready for our moving sale that we had last Saturday. "These are just what I need!" I said, and so now I have a few pairs of non-maternity-but-bigger-than-I-usually-wear pants to wear for a few more weeks.

I'm still in my "food is gross" phase, meaning that unless I am craving it at that particular moment, it repulses me. I dread dinnertime because it's generally doubtful that what I really want is something we already have in the house. Matt is at the mercy of my cravings and will end up eating spinach salad and corndogs rather than beef with broccoli or whatever he would have preferred. (He's been doing most of the cooking, so it's not like he couldn't fix himself whatever he wants; he's just sweet like that and eats what I want to eat!) Last night, I came home and declared "pulled pork barbecue, baked beans, cole slaw, and cornbread!" and he went out and got some for us. He was actually pleased with that craving!

I'm not totally exhausted all the time, but still wouldn't say I have energy. With only 2 1/2 weeks until we move now, I need all the energy I can get! I stayed up late (as in, 10 or 11) a couple nights last week getting ready for our moving sale, and managed to get up at 4 for the royal wedding. We have lots of packing to do, and arrangements for new furniture, new doctors, new day care, all that to make. It's a busy time, but we're having fun, and maybe by my four month update (or soonafter), we'll know the gender of this little baby!