31 Weeks!

Here’s what Alpha Mom says about this week:

Your Baby:

• Blah blah blah 3.3 pounds, bag of oranges, sock full of nickels, etc.
• Enjoys yawning, sucking his or her thumb, kicking mom in the diaphragm.
• Turn-offs include: getting the hiccups, really loud noises and you trying to do all that boring “sleeping” at night.

You:

• Can totally round down your answer to “two months” when people ask you how much longer you have to go. DO NOT focus on the crazy week-to-month-ratio math at this point in pregnancy, particularly when there are breakable, smashy objects within reach.
• May be weirdly and inexplicably congested all the time. I, for one, appear to be allergic to my pillow. This is also prime time for pregnancy colds, as the toll on your body and immune system is getting higher by the week. Take it easy, slow down, take your vitamins and try try try to get enough sleep.
• Can now play everybody’s favorite game, Guess The Body Part That’s Sticking Out Next To My Belly Button! Elbow or heel? Head or butt? Did I seriously just maybe feel my baby’s BIG TOE?

Maisy is still very active and loves moving around in there.  She gets the hiccups atleast 2-3 times a day and sometimes they are so strong that my stomach jumps with every hiccup.  I noticed in a meeting the other day that 2 of my co-workers were watching my stomach move from across the table! 

I’m getting even more Braxton Hicks contractions now and they seem stronger to the point where they take my breath away sometimes.  Still have heartburn too, those seem to be my two symptoms that stick with me pretty much the whole pregnancy.

I had a doctor appointment this week…Maisy’s heartrate was 148, my blood pressure was normal, and I gained SIX pounds!  Yes, in 2 weeks!  I’ve been waiting for that huge spike and it came this week.  So that’s a total gain of 19 pounds so far.  But it’s official that I do not have diabetes and they won’t be testing me anymore (yay!) (that probably explains the 6 pound gain…I might have gone on a sugar binge after passing my last test!)

Here we are at 31 weeks!

Just To See You Smile

As a parent one of the best rewards is seeing your child smile.  There’s something about knowing that they have joy in their heart that makes you feel so good and happy yourself.  I always find myself thinking of little ways to surprise Ryder or make something exciting for him.  Even if it’s just little things, like sharing an ice cream on the front porch before dinner, taking him for a slurpee after therapy, or letting him watch an extra episode of Blue’s Clue’s before bedtime, he gets so excited.  I notice Daddy doing the same thing like pulling a surprise snack for Ryder out of his lunch box that he bought for him during the day, or bringing him home a little prize out of the gumball machine if he stops at the grocery store.  Not that we constantly have to be showering him with gifts, but it’s like we can’t help but constantly be on a mission to make this kid smile.  His smile just makes our whole world make sense.

I found a really cute website that has personalized goodies called www.frecklebox.com .  I ordered some stuff for Ryder’s Easter basket but it didn’t end up shipping until the Monday after Easter, go figure.  But, it kind of worked out because I knew Ryder would think it was extra special to get a package in the mail with such cool stuff…Like these “Ryder Rocks!” stickers:

His new Ryder notebook and “Rev It Up Ryder” coloring book:

And a Ryder placemat!

He’s still telling me today “Momma, stanks for my package!  It’s soooo special!”  He is so appreciative which makes it all even more worth it.  But the best part, by far, is the smile!

Easter Take 1 & Take 2

We celebrated Easter with Alan’s side of the family on Saturday evening and Ryder was so excited to do his very first Easter Egg Hunt! 

 

He found all the eggs and went right inside to check out all his goodies!  How cute is this Easter Basket that Re-Re ordered for him?!  It definitely came in handy for the Easter Egg Hunts, and Ryder was so good about holding it with Lefty and picking up his eggs and putting them in the basket with Righty. 

 

Ryder got another Easter basket this morning when he woke up…from the Easter Bunny!  We told him that the Easter Bunny knocked on our door and asked us to give it to him.  I felt so bad lying, but it was really cute to see how excited Ryder got.  Having 2 older brothers left no room for make believe in my house growing up, so some of this stuff is a learning process for me!

 

We went to Church and stopped by Memew’s but couldn’t stay long.  The only picture I got there was with Amanda who is due to have Baby Peyton in 4 weeks! 

Then it was off to celebrate Easter with my family…which meant another Easter Egg Hunt!

My handsome long-haired boy :)

  

And his big pregnant Momma :)

 

What a fun Easter we had this year!  The most important part is that we have a real reason to celebrate, aside from the bunnies and the eggs and the baskets and ALL.THE.CANDY!  I thought I’d share the words to this song by Casting Crowns called Glorious Day.  I think it’s such a beautiful explanation of what exactly Jesus has done for us and a great reminder of why we get to celebrate this Glorious Day :)

One day when Heaven was filled with His praises
One day when sin was as black as could be
Jesus came forth to be born of a virgin
Dwelt among men, my example is He
Word became flesh and the light shined among us
His glory revealed

Living, He loved me
Dying, He saved me
Buried, He carried my sins far away
Rising, He justified freely forever
One day He's coming
Oh glorious day, oh glorious day

One day they led Him up Calvary's mountain
One day they nailed Him to die on a tree
Suffering anguish, despised and rejected
Bearing our sins, my Redeemer is He
Hands that healed nations, stretched out on a tree
And took the nails for me

Living, He loved me
Dying, He saved me
Buried, He carried my sins far away
Rising, He justified freely forever
One day He's coming
Oh glorious day, oh glorious day

One day the grave could conceal Him no longer
One day the stone rolled away from the door
Then He arose, over death He had conquered
Now He's ascended, my Lord evermore
Death could not hold Him, the grave could not keep Him
From rising again

One day the trumpet will sound for His coming
One day the skies with His glories will shine
Wonderful day, my Beloved One, bringing
My Savior, Jesus, is mine

Maddy’s Birthday Party!

Luckily the weather ended up being nice and we all gathered at Gilbert Run to celebrate Madalynn’s very 1st Birthday!!  She was adorable, as always, and I think she enjoyed having the spotlight!  Here’s the Birthday girl about to tear into her cupcake :)

What a good idea to have a party at the park…Ryder was excited to go play on the playground so all the dads took all the kids over to play.  Wish I had pictures but it was nice for us Momma’s to get a break so we took advantage of that!  Here are a few pictures I did get at the party though:

 

I’m sure that Ryder’s favorite part of the party had nothing to do with the actual party, but the fact that Miss Sonya (Madalynn’s Grammy) brought Ryder the new blanket she made him to match his big boy bed!

   

He loved it so much, he even told her that!  He kept saying “I love dis new blankie" “dis new blankie is so special”.  After that, all he wanted was to be wrapped in his blankie and he kept asking to go home.  Oh, if you peek in the bag you can see a pink one in there too!  She already made one for Maisy :)  Ryder asked for Maisy’s lastnight when I put him to bed, but I decided not to give in to this request.  He loves these blankies so much that he will end up attached to the pink one (he already has Big Blank, Little Blank, now New Blank!) and that’s just not a good idea. 

Ryder was exhausted after all the birthday party action, so we got in the car, covered up with new blank, and he drifted off to dream while we headed to our next destination…Easter Take 1!

Movin’ Out

Ryder had a plan.  This I realized after a few minutes of silence, which NEVER happens with Ryder.  He is always narrating so we always know what he’s doing before, during, and after any situation.  But not this time.  I finally decided to walk to his room to see what was keeping him so busy, and quiet.  I didn’t quite make it to his room though, because just outside the door in the hallway I found this:

 

Mommy: “Ryder, What are you doing??”

Ryder: “Movin’ Out!”

He had taken every single animal, blanket, and pillow off of his bed, and “moved” himself out into the hallway! 

From his hair, to his personality, to his plans…this child is a mess!  Hmmm, I don’t know where he gets it from.  Except this video might give you a little clue, Daddy likes to re-write the words to songs, get Ryder on board as his back up singer, and then sing them nice and loud while I’m trying to watch American Idol.  "Don’t you forget about me” has now turned into “Don’t you forget to go pee!”  What a mess!

30 Weeks!

It feels so good to be in the 30’s!  I knew I was getting close to the end, but finally reaching that 30 week mark brings confirmation that this ride is almost over!  Here is what Alpha Mom says about this week:

Your Baby:

• Weighs about three pounds and is 17 inches long. Since most full-term babies are between 20 and 22 inches long at 40 weeks’ gestation, your baby will pack on more pounds than inches in the 10 weeks or so.
• Is starting to get a little crowded in there, but still has room to wiggle and roll and punch and kick.
• Despite all the movement, it’s still damn near impossible to tell what position your baby is in for sure (head down, breech, transverse, etc.), but it’s also still too early to be worrying about it. MOST babies settle into a head-down position around 36 weeks, and some still manage to flip themselves around after that.

You:

• May feel like you’re gestating a pissed-off housecat rather than a chubby wittle baby at this point, with some movement and kicks causing ACTUAL PHYSICAL PAIN. Some women experience kicks so sharp and unnerving they mistake them for uterine contractions, even if they’ve already been through pregnancy and labor and should really know better.
• Some of these women may even write pregnancy guides on the Internet.

Luckily I haven’t had many painful kicks from Maisy, but wow have I been getting a lot of them!  Pretty much anyone that has wanted to feel her move has been able to because she is just constantly rolling around and kicking or punching or hiccupping or shaking or whatever else she does in there. 

When I was pregnant with Ryder I had this horrible pain in the lowest rib on the right side of my rib cage…and it has returned!  It seems like once the baby starts taking up so much room there is none left for all of my organs so all my insides get shoved up into my ribcage which is just painful!  On a less painful note though, my back is feeling 100 times better!!  I still have a very faint pain going down my leg and the only numbness left in my foot is in my middle toe.  So weird…but much better than what it was, so I’ll take it!

Here we are at 30 weeks, the first one is Me with Maisy and the second is Me with Ryder – still carrying the same! (Don’t be surprised if next week you see a tattoo across my forehead that says “YES I’M SURE IT’S ONLY ONE!”)

 

Easter Eggs

This was our first experience dying Easter eggs since Mommy & Daddy were little, it’s so fun getting to do all of these activities all over again! 

First we put the tablets in:

Then we dipped our eggs:

 

Then we decorated them with stickers:

 

And Voila!  Beautiful (don’t judge!) Elmo Easter Eggs!

 

“Happy Easter!!!”

 

Daddy made a Rooster egg, since Rooster’s can’t lay eggs…?

Then we showed off the dye on our hands that probably won’t come out for a week:

And that brought our Easter egg dying festivities to an end because immediately after this picture was taken:

The eggs went flying!  So we now have 6 smashed eggs in the trash.  I know buddy, I always thought this activity was kind of pointless too! I mean what do you do with the eggs when you’re done?  Eat them?  Hide them?  Leave them for the Easter Bunny?  Well either way, all good things must come to an end :)

And the Verdict Is…

We’ve decided not to do another round of casting right now.  I’m not sure how long we’ll wait to do it again, but we think that Ryder gained enough strength from this first 3 weeks of Constraint Therapy that we’ll let him build on that for a while and see how he does.  His left arm is so much stronger now from constantly using it and he is a lot more confident when it comes to trying things with Lefty so we’ve seen enough progress to feel like the time wouldn’t be wasted if we decided not to follow up with a second round right away. 

He has such a good understanding now that he has two hands and needs to try to use them, that all we have to do is mention Lefty and he immediately takes it out of a fist, or joins Lefty in on whatever he is doing.  I think that in itself is so huge because now we can help remind him to use 2 hands when he doesn’t think of it himself. 

He does think and talk about Lefty a lot though, he gets so proud and will tell us that Lefty helped or that he used two hands.  He has definitely resorted back to using one hand often, initiating things with his right hand, and fisting when he is concentrating on doing something with Righty.  But there are so many more things that he IS doing with Lefty now like closing doors/pushing doors open, holding his cups with 2 hands, feeding himself if he has one piece of food in each hand, just a lot of things that he never would have been able to accomplish before the casting.

We’re very proud of Ryder and think we’re making the right decision in letting him have some time with both hands free to work on using them both.  Here are some pics of him using 2 hands:

 

 

And here’s a video to show that he actually misses having sword fight on!

Ryder as a 2 Year Old

Ever since Ryder’s Birthday we have been so consumed with all of this Constraint Therapy and casting.  So much has gone on aside from all of that, I feel like I need to do a major update just about Ryder as a big TWO year old now!

First of all, is it written somewhere that they turn two and the Terrible Two’s kick in immediately?!  I thought that at some points within this year we might be faced with some testing and tantrums that we would figure out when we got to that point, totally not expecting it to be literally the day he turned 2!  All of a sudden, we are fighting a battle over getting dressed and diaper changes.  It is not a logical battle where he has a legitimate reason to be fighting for his side.  His side is just “I dont want to” and ours is “well you have to” and this brings on a war that ends in spankings and tears and time-outs.  It is so unnecessary, but we are determined to win this battle because if he is testing us just in these 2 areas and we haven’t even gotten through the first month of the 2’s, then I don’t even want to know what would lie ahead if we lose this battle.  Part of this might be resulting from the fact that it’s not easy to get dressed/undressed with the cast on, but it’s ridiculous none-the-less.

Once he transforms back into his old Ryder self, he is still such a super sweetie to his Mommy & Daddy.  He has a new thing with wanting us to feel stuff all the time “Momma, feel dis!  Feel my big blankie, feel how soffy it is!”  He thinks that the greatest thing I could ever do for him is wash his blanket, he tells me numerous times throughout the day “Momma, stanks for washin’ my big blank! Momma, smell it, it smells sooooo good!”  He is very affectionate and will come find us just because “Daddy needs a kiss!”  He always cuddles up to us and just says “awww hey Mommy, hey Daddy, Ryder luzzz you”.  Sweet boy.

We’ve had our first few encounters with bad words and it is SO hard not to laugh when they come out of his cute little mouth, but we’re doing our best to teach him when things are not nice to say.  When you ask where he heard the bad words he always says “Uncle G”!  Throws him right under the bus!  So Mommy’s famous line now is “watch your mouth” when I realize that things are coming out that Ryder is obviously picking up on.  The first one was “Bullsh*t”.  He hasn’t said it again in a few days though so hopefully he forgot about that word.  But the other day he was walking across the door ledge and kept losing his balance and said “Dis Damn Stang!”  Stang = Thing.  We can’t blame it all on Uncle G though, we’re all guilty.  He has picked up “shut up” from Mommy, and the other day Alan ran in a gas station to use the bathroom, and while he was gone Ryder told me “Daddy’s in da bafroom takin’ a piss”.  Like I said, it’s so hard not to laugh because you don’t even realize the way you word things until they come out of an innocent mouth.  Oops!

His vocabulary grows every day and there really isn’t any situation where he can’t explain to you what is going on.  I’ve heard some pretty big words come out of his mouth though that shocked me…like orthotics, comfortable, delicious, excited, hasta minana!  He has such a good memory and uses it to memorize songs that he hears.  He now knows all the words to Jesus Loves the Little Children, Nick Nack Patty Whack, Happy Birthday, and I have seriously heard him sing his whole entire ABC’s song.  Of course singing songs is never one of those things I can get him to do on cue, I always just over hear him doing it, but one day I’ll catch him on video. 

He was doing SO well with potty training, but that has come to a complete stop!  I knew that as soon as he realized it was something we wanted him to do and wasn’t his idea all by himself that he would start to second guess the whole thing.  I don’t think having the cast on helped at all either, it was probably just way too much going on at once.  Actually, the night that he got the cast off he was in the bathtub and told me that he needed to go potty, so I took him out and put him on the potty, he went and then got back in the tub.  So hopefully that’s a sign that since the cast is off maybe he’ll start showing interest again.

I could go on and on, but I just wanted to update on some of the major things he is doing during this stage so that I never forget them.  He is so entertaining and I’m always asking him questions just to hear what answers he’ll come up with, or listening to him talking to himself over the monitor just to hear his little mind at work.  This is such a fun stage (trying at times!) that I wish I could just wrap his personality up in a box and open it whenever I need a good laugh for the rest of my life! 

29 Weeks!

Only 10 weeks left!  Here is what Alpha Mom says about this week:

Your Baby:

• Is big and strong enough to resemble a sinister alien thrashing around your abdomen, as my husband kindly pointed out recently, upon noticing a rouge pointy elbow jabbing up and down around my belly button.
• Is sucking up every drop of calcium you can provide as his or her bones continue to harden and become more…uh…bone-like.
• DID I MENTION THE POINTY JABBING? WITH THE SHARP LITTLE BONES?

You:

• Might start noticing a resurgence of first-trimester-type symptoms like heartburn and other gastrointestinal issues. Things are getting a BIT crowded in there, and the lack of room means slower digestion and more gas and constipation and woe.
• Are gaining weight. I don’t know or care to look up what the “recommended” amount is at this stage, but most likely you are starting to notice a steady upward movement of that little thingie on your doctor’s scale. If you’ve been using pregnancy as a dietary sweet tooth free-for-all, now might be a good time to start reining it in and focusing on healthy foods and portions instead of “BABY NEEDS CAKE AND A TUB OF FROSTING ON THE SIDE.”

Since I just updated about our doctor appointments, I don’t really have much to add about this week.  But here is our picture, Ryder wanted to be a part of this one, I didn’t realize that my belly is the perfect height to rest on his head!

CIT Week 3 Recap – And The Cast Is OFF!

Week 3 of the casting went great as it almost started to seem normal for Ryder to have a cast on his arm.  He was doing so much with Lefty that his limitations seemed less and less.  Towards the end of the week, the cast had loosened up some and his fingers were sticking out a little further than they probably should have been.  So we started noticing him trying things with Righty first, then moving on to Lefty when Ryder couldn’t do what he needed.  At first I was concerned, but since he almost always had to follow up by using and succeeding with Lefty I realized that was probably really good for his brain to send the same signals to each side of his body and have both arms trying the same thing.  Hopefully now that the cast is off he will remember that both hands are capable of doing things, not just righty!  Not many pictures from week 3, just a few of him playing basketball at therapy:

 

 

Challenges:

• Pincer grasp
• Using fingers independently
• Supination

Accomplishments:

• Reaching across his body with Lefty to grab something
• Aiming and picking things up on the first try
• Gaining strength and coordination
• Opening his hand flat
• Picking up round objects

So today he got the cast off!  This was very exciting, even Ryder said “I so essiiitteedd!!”  When Abby came to get him out of the waiting room he said in a very demanding tone “Abby, get your tool and take dis blue sword fight off!”  I was nervous how he would react to the sword cutting it off, but he thought the tool was pretty neat so he just sat and watched and when she was done he said “Stanks Miss Abby!”  Stanks = Thanks, but in this case I thought his word was pretty appropriate because his arm STANK!  For real! 

As soon as he got his cast off I handed him his drink, which he took from me with LEFTY and then held on with both hands to drink.  We were shocked, so this was a good way to start things off!

For the rest of the evening I’ve noticed him with something in each hand pretty often:

 

Other than that he has pretty much been walking around with his right arm raised high all night, for whatever reason, I think he’s just happy to have it back!

Some things have gone back to normal, his arm isn’t as loose as it was and he is definitely using righty as his dominant hand, but both of those were to be expected.  Some good things that have gone back to normal are long sleeved pajamas!  Being able to wear a jacket!  And a normal bath where we didn’t have to stress about the cast getting wet! 

Ryder is in the best mood ever tonight, I’m sure this whole ordeal was a little rough on him, but he’s just so resilient and always bounces back.  What a strong little boy he is.  We’ll see how the weekend progresses and make a final decision next week about doing another round or not.  For now, we’re just enjoying righty’s freedom!