February 2009 Archives

Photo by Craig

Anna had a great time getting the legos super tall. Even Sarah was supportive and didn't knock the tower down.

Pregnancy insomnia seems to have hit me this week. I woke up at 3:30 on Wednesday morning and could not go back to sleep. I tried at 6 AM but at 6:05 Sarah started yelling, "quit it, cats!" because somehow Chopstick and Clementine nudged the girls' door open after I crawled back in bed. So the girls were up which meant that I was not going to get any more sleep! At least the nausea seems to have disappeared now. Still taking it easy on my back though.

Babycenter says that Baby Boy is weighs 5 ounces now (about as much as a turnip), and he's around 5 inches long from head to bottom. I am still at a ten-pound weight gain which is good news that I've slowed down a little because I am positive I will gain a lot while we're in Colorado next month (Panera Bread Company here I come!).

Sarah is sampling a Home Plus bagel which, actually, isn't too bad (yay!).

The girls really love a book called The Tiger Who Came to Tea and whenever Craig comes home we say, "is that a furry, stripey tiger coming in the door?" So when Sarah & I saw these tiger ears at Home Plus today we though we had better have them. She wore them out of the store and then wore them to the bakery and to pick up Anna from school. Anna got in on the ear-wearing action by putting some cat ears on.

Sarah is in love with Craig right now. It's been in development but was certainly a problem last week when he went to Ulsan for the night and Sarah would not go to bed because she wanted "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! ((sob, sob, sob)) Daddyyyyyyyyyyyy!"

I think I am on to her though and she really just wants what she doesn't currently have because when Craig gets home from work, although she is super happy to see him she still wants "Mommyyyyyy!" most of the rest of the evening.

Photos by Yeri.

The girls got to try on some pretty fancy dresses today at ballet. Anna was so excited to tell me all about them when she got home from class so she was extra pleased when one of the moms emailed the pictures she took with her cell phone so we could admire them. I think the class will have a performance at the end of the spring and these are the dresses they'll wear (that's my understanding anyway!). It looks like the boys will just wear their black leotards.

Anna & I made invitations for her party this afternoon. I bought some pretty card stock in Colorado last summer and printed the information on them and then Anna glued four butterflies to each invitation. She is going to have a "fairy" party on the 14th of March.

Photo by Craig.

Squealing. I can't figure out how they've both decided to look over to my left like that and avoid camera-eye contact as much as possible.

The girls asked to get out the background paper today but I can't tell you why because they certainly were not cooperating when it was time to take the pictures! It was really rainy and dark outside so some of these are not as sharp as I would like.

The Ladybirds went to Mr. Pizza today for a field trip. We got to watch the guy flipping the pizza dough in the air and the kids got to put the toppings on. Then, of course, we all got to eat some pizza for lunch!

Anna's new favorite color is green. If you ask Sarah what her favorite color is she always says, "pink!"

Left image show spine; right image is a crotch shot although Dr. Lee did not show us what he saw to indicated boy.

Left image is Baby Boy's face with hand near top; right image is an arm.

Craig, Sarah, & I went to the doctor today and I asked Dr. Lee if he could tell if Baby is a boy or a girl. Dr. Lee seemed to have trouble getting a good look in that area after he did some other body-part checks. He turned off the machine, started walking away and said, "95% sure it's a boy." And then he asked me if I was happy. I honestly was so surprised that he didn't point anything out to us that I only said 95% makes me doubt! He then said, "you can never be 100% sure until delivery." Craig thinks Dr. Lee looked stressed out this morning and I'll admit that he wasn't quite as detailed when he did the ultrasound. At any rate we are excited for a boy (although I am also a little scared!) and I will be sure to ask again at our next visit.

I also wanted to note that Baby Boy was scratching his head with both hands during the ultrasound which was pretty cute! I have started feeling some very tiny movement which I really feel like is less than I did with the girls. Definitely nothing consistent yet.

The back pain that I had last week is gone (although I'm still taking it easy because my back still feels "tired" when I do too much). I have a bit of nausea that seems to be triggered by sweets. I need to cut those out anyway so this is motivation!

Babycenter says that Baby Boy is 4 1/2 inches long (head to rump) and weighs 3 1/2 ounces.

(We had 12 votes for Boy and 6 votes for Girl in our gender poll. Next we'll have to guess if Baby Boy will have red or blonde hair...)

I know I'm missing some things here but here is a quick Sarah-update this past month:

She is singing a lot. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; the Twelve Days of Christmas, and Happy Birthday are among her favorites. She also has made up a song to play on the piano that goes something like this: "Oh purple, I love you, purple." It is super cute and I'm trying to catch her on video but you know how that goes: as soon as the camera comes out all cuteness stops!

Sarah's speech is becoming more clear although she does still throw more tantrums than Anna did at this age. She likes to hug and kiss a lot and gives the cats her attention much more than they would care for.

This past weekend Sarah has been using the potty and toilet for both pee and poop on her own initiative! She still always has a wet diaper when she goes but always also goes at least a little so I'm curious how this is going to go down... She still wakes up wet in the morning so everything is totally different than with Anna. Here's hoping she's done with diapers before August!

Craig and Anna made cookies this weekend and we basically hung around the house. My back felt better on Saturday morning when I woke up and felt even better today. My nausea, however is back. The nausea is better than back pain but I was hoping that was over by now!

Anna & Craig suffer from sympathy pains. Craig is craving food and Anna's back "hurts" and she needs help getting up off of chairs, etc.

The last two days I have had excruciating pain in my lower back. I thought this was sciatica but now am thinking it might be "pelvic girdle pain." Either way I could barely turn over last night in bed and almost could not get out of bed in the morning. I took two Tylenol and then Sarah & I stopped at the doctor this morning. He basically said there's nothing I can do (I asked about acupuncture or seeing a chiropractor). I've been using a hot pad today and tomorrow will try some kind of patch the doctor suggested to pick up at the pharmacy. I have been avoiding lifting and bending as much as possible but when I take a break and sit down it is so awful to try to get up again! This is worse than any related pain I had with Anna & Sarah. I even refused a peek at Baby today because I didn't want to go through getting on and off the table! I will go next week for my regular appointment and I really hope I'm better by then. I was charged 2,500 Korean Won for my visit (that's $1.78 US Dollars).

Sarah and I were doing puzzles in the playroom and when we came out we saw that Anna had built a book bridge to stay out of the mud. The path eventually went all the way down the hall to the bedrooms and wrapped around the kitchen table. There was some conflict when Sarah thought she wanted to read one of the "stepping stones" but I helped Anna find a new book to replace the ones Sarah took and all was well.

I have had much less nausea the last week or so (yay!). I am still incredibly tired though and although I do know that I will be tired the whole pregnancy I sure hope it's not this much the entire time! I over-did it when we moved last week and have had some pretty bad sciatic nerve pain ever since. I haven't been carrying/holding Sarah much but it is not going away fast. This was the first time that has cropped up with this pregnancy; I can't remember when it started with Sarah and Anna.

I'm basically only thinking about my upcoming appointment (next week; the week of the 18th—I'll be 16 weeks on the 18th so that's the soonest I'll go in) and hoping that we can find out whether this is a boy or a girl! We found out with Anna at 16 weeks so I hope we're as lucky this time around.

I occasionally think I might feel some movement but it's nothing definite or clear yet. Babycenter says that Baby measures 3 1/2 inches from head to bottom, is about the size of a lemon, and he weighs 1 1/2 ounces. I haven't weighed myself in a while but I'm pretty sure I'm up by at least ten pounds. Crazy since I didn't gain with Sarah until after 20 weeks and I started off this pregnancy 5 pounds heavier than with Sarah and 10 pounds heavier than with Anna. Hopefully I can keep my top weight the same as both girls (I gained less with Sarah).

I think the new white cupboards really help to make the kitchen and family room brighter.

Nice static-electricity, Sarah!

Anna & Sarah are having a blast with the new terrace. They love driving their cars out there (although I'm afraid to ask our downstairs neighbor how that sounds in her family room; I'm sure the excitement will die down shortly).

Craig got a shot of the movers plus some CS Total people packing up our kitchen downstairs.

We moved up to the top terrace today! We hired movers because we do have a lot of "stuff" (although I am working on this as energy allows) and quite a few pieces of furniture that I would not have been able to help out with. We will now have only 21 stairs instead of 74 and Sarah will be able to walk up and down to our apartment and the parking lot and I won't have to carry her! We also have a big terrace that I already love much more than the little yard we had downstairs.

The apartment is identical except for little things like a step down into the bathroom here where there wasn't downstairs, the shower is 1/2 a tile narrower upstairs, the handles on the (brand new) kitchen cupboards are horizontal instead of vertical, etc. We also decided to take this opportunity to move the girls into the same room. Anna wanted to be in Elizabeth's old room so the girls are sharing what used to be our office, Anna's old room is now the playroom/office, and Sarah's old room will be used as the guest-room until Baby3 starts occupying it sometime in September.

I was surprised that there were people (a nice-sized line, actually) riding on the "frume" ride. It was nice weather but not that nice!

We might check out the rest of the amusement park this spring when the weather is warmer.

The girls were disappointed that we drove to Jinhae instead of taking the car ferry but the new bridge over there made the drive slightly more convenient than the ferry. It took just over an hour to get there (there ferry takes 45 minutes terminal-to-terminal plus twenty minutes to get to the terminal on Geoje.

The sledding hill was pretty small and the snow was pretty slushy/icy (all man-made). Sarah refused to go down and Anna went down twice with Craig but didn't really like it (it was too fast). There were only inter-tubes available and you were not allowed to put your child in your lap. I ended up chickening out, too, since I kept imagining myself doing a belly-flop onto the hard-packed snow and crushing Baby3! Hopefully next year both Anna & Sarah will be more open to going down.

There was another area where the kids could just play in the snow and check it out which the girls had a ton of fun doing. We had a "snowball fight" and they loved it. When we were done we went to McDonald's for lunch (one of these days I really need to go there for breakfast!!!) then came back home and got Sarah down for a late nap. I'm glad we went and the weather was really nice today—we were way over-dressed!