Tidbits

Recent events/updates:

Sam's favorite bedtime songs are currently "Sanctus" (must be sung 3 times).  Her second favorite is "Hail Mary", third is "Sing a song of six pence" and fourth is "Our Father".  Whenever any of those is sung at mass (minus number three of course) she forgets ALL rules and shouts "AH!! They're singing MY SONG!!!"
It's cute, but we're working on just singing along, rather than announcing to the congregation that she knows the song.

__________________________________________________________________________________

All day after the easter egg hunt at my parent's place Sam bragged about "winning" and "beating everyone."  She also "beats me" when she reaches a room/door/floor before I do.  But if I make it first she insists we weren't playing race.  Jeremy thinks I'm being cruel sometimes when I trick her, but SHE'S the one who makes up the random rules and calls "race" when she's halfway to the destination and I'm waaay beind her. 
___________________________________________________________________________________

Our ultrasound is scheduled for May 1st.  Sam is still insistant that it's a girl (she knew we were pregnant before we did, so we're going with her guess).  Lucy and my dad are REALLY rooting for a boy, since my brother and SIL are expecting a girl.  Another girl would make four and poor Grayson would be the only boy.  I think I'll panic if it's a boy (which is funny, considering I really wanted Sam to be a boy).

___________________________________________________________________________________

I finally have my energy back but have a 24-hour headache that only goes away if I slip an Advil (I know, I know, big no-no while pregnant, but my midwife ok-ed it if it just becomes unbearable and keeps me up at night).  After talking to a few medical professionals, I've been diagnosed with TMJ.  I've been fitted with a mouth guard and literally can't wait.  Seriously, I'm so tired of needles poking my eye and hear 24/7.  Jeremy's excited to stop the "REALLY LOUD" tooth grinding.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Sam moved, without incident, to her BED.  And she stays there 99% of the time throughout the night.  She's woken up with a fit ONCE since she moved there.  It's just insane how well she's done in learning to calm herself down! 

___________________________________________________________________________________

This will be my last summer with just me and Sam.  We're planning big.  Bubbles, swimming, gardening and (free) museums EVERY day.   Oh, and Arkansas too.

Home Update

It's taken a year, but the basement is 90% finished!  We added a storage room, put up drywall and my dad showed me how to lay carpet.  These pictures aren't 100% current as we've since replaced the fluorescent lights, put up window and door trim, but you can get the idea.  It adds around 400 sq feet of living space (one of the reasons we bought the place).  The rest won't get done until after the baby comes as we are doing all this with cash, but for now we'll live without a finished ceiling and baseboards. 

Before.  Notice the need for storage.

After- storage room to the right.

Inside storage room.  Jeremy built those shelves and was very proud of them.

Another angle, before

and after.

View from the couch before

and after.Our computer desk is currently to the left of the TV.

 The one area I didn't get a picture of was the area to the left.  It's slightly smaller than what is seen here due to a random closet.  Jeremy has his 6' x 4' gaming table there (he cut it down from 8' so it would give us more living space).  I'll have to post a picture later as I can't find the camera...I'm not sure why I didn't take a "before" of the other side of the room...
Anyway, we LOVE it and it's been worth all the exhausting weekends.  I really wanted it done so Sam and I would have a nice cool place to spend this summer (it stays 65 degrees down there no matter how hot it gets outside).  I keep telling Jer that every time I walk downstairs I feel like I'm in someone else's house!

Hope Francis

Today was quite an emotional rollercoaster as I sat on pins and needles with my students and co-workers waiting to hear who the next sucessor to St. Peter would be.  I laughed with delight at the fact that NO ONE saw it coming.  Although he's older than I thought the next pope would be, I've am falling in love with him the more and more I read about him!

Despite all this, the highlight of my day was hearing Sam re-telling the story after I tried to explain to her what was going on.  After I told her that I was listening to the radio to hear what they were saying I asked her to listen for them talking about "Pope Francis."  I almost forgot she was in the car she was so quiet and then randomly she would squeal- "Ah! They said 'pope francis' again!"

When we got home she asked if she could see a video of him.  She was very interested in seeing the black smoke first, then the white smoke.  Every time we'd see a video with him in it she's exclaim, "There's the new Hope Francis!" Later we went to a Mexican restaurant to celebrate our Argentinian pope (my mom's words, not mine...she also kept saying "habeñero papus").   Sam started jabbering on and after a few minutes I realized she was re-telling the story of the "New Hope".  I'll try to get it on video later, as it's quite detailed, but the rough transcript is below (I had her retell it a few times because it was just so darn impressive).

"Once upon a time there was an old hope and he was old and got retired and said there needed to be a new hope.  So he went to sleep and everybody picked a new hope.  First there was black smoke and that means there was no hope, but then there was white smoke and that means they picked the new Hope Francis."

It seems so short when typed out...she repeats lines a lot and elaborates on a few details, but that's the  jist.  I can't bring myself to correct her anymore as it seems very appropriate to call him the new "Hope".

By the way, for those of you who speak Spanish, below is a commercial he did last year at Christmas.  Such a sweet smile!

Rite of Passage

One distinct memory I have from when I was real young was cutting my hair.  I just wanted to see what it was like and then immediately felt horribly guilty, as I knew I'd just done something I shouldn't have.  I slowly walked out of the playroom, hoping mom and dad wouldn't notice.  But they did. Apparently it looked something like this.

Anyway, Sam recently cut her hair at school because her "hair was in her face." Luckily
1) it just looks like she has bangs now
2) we can still pull it to the side with a clip (we were growing out the bangs)

I guess the boy next to her had hair in his face as well, as she helped him out too.  Luckily

1) the boy had long shaggy hair, so you couldn't really tell
2) the parents thought it was hilarious.  They even saved the 3 inch clipping.

But Sam didn't see the humor in it and decided to color on the wall to vent her frustration.

What can I say, it's been a rough couple of weeks with me living on the couch and Daddy in charge.

I wonder if she'll remember it later in life too, minus the horrible embarrassment. 

Classic

Picture has nothing to do with post. 

Sam "fell" off a chair and was wailing a little too loud for the bump she endured. She was crying and working on some tears when she glanced out the window.  She stopped, gasped and pointed outside, "LOOK!  A squirrel!"

Expiration October 1st

More background to come when I can function again...

Progress?

A behavioral therapist recently pulled all the idiosyncrasies of Samantha together to help us be better understand why Sam is..."different" (her migraines, hour-long night screaming fits, waking up screaming since infancy, food sensitivities, light sensitivities, etc) and how to be better parents.  So far everything we work on she responds wonderfully to.  She's able to play rather than lining toys up and forbidding everyone from touching them, she sleeps through the night (90% of the time) and can calm herself down when she gets into one of her fits (not tantrums- Lord I wish they were just tantrums) about her socks/carseat buckle/touching sand and sometimes just because.

Anyway last night we saw some progress in how she calms down from her night fits.  We hadn't seen one in about 3 weeks so that in itself was an improvement.  I almost called the therapist at midnight to tell him what happened, I was so excited.  I put her back in her pack and play while she was flailing (don't ask- it's the only place she'll sleep right now...we're working on it...) and told her I'd give her her puppy blanket back when she apologized to Daddy for screaming at him.  She threw a huge fit, kicking, screaming til she was hoarse, etc...but she stayed in her bed until she was done!!  Then she came in to our room calmly and apologized to Jeremy.  This is HUGE.  And finally, when I gave her the puppy back and told her to go to back to bed she skipped off happily and curled up under her blankets.

I laid there for quite a while trying to process what had just happened.  The therapist said that eventually we would see progress at night just by working on her fits during the day and I saw it right there first hand.  The night screaming ended under 30 minutes from start to finish- a new record.  And she did most of the work for us (ie calming herself down).

Unfortunately, that was when the bad news started.  Jeremy and I went back to sleep around midnight and at 1:30am we wake up to hear her in the hallway.  Apparently she never actually went to sleep.  I couldn't help but crack up when Jeremy told me she had every surface in the hallway and bathroom covered in blankets and towels and whatnot, claiming she was making "beds" for her animals.

So for an hour and a half she played quietly by herself.  Why can't she do that during the DAY?

Wearing a too-small swimsuit over JEANS-- big improvement on the texture sensitivity front :)

Baby steps, Kim...baby steps.