Mommy's little ladybug

Okay, so it's not the world's best picture of her costume. I tried getting better, but all I ended up with was a white outline of a little girl in the costume thanks to the flash and the fact that both Cady's parents are white, white, white. (Though, James has a ton of freckles on his arm, so he looks darker). Cadence, by the way, does have the skin prone to freckles, she just hasn't been exposed to the sun enough to develop many. She does have a splash of very light freckles down the back of one of her calves, however, that she got shortly after our camping trip in July (bad idea... way too hot).

Please ignore the laundry in the background. I had just washed a load of Cadence's laundry and she had decided to help me sort through it before I put it away. Super helpful. She also likes to go through her drawers and pull out the things that aren't folded to her liking so I can refold them and put them away properly...

We went to 2 ward Halloween parties to show Cadence off, and at both she was fussy and cranky up until the time I was ready to sit down and relax, then she was wanting to walk everywhere. At our ward party, she must have walked up and down the field a dozen times. And at my mom's ward party, she walked across the gym at least twice as much. However, she did look 200% adorable toddling around in her tutu. And at Friday's party, she got tired of waiting for me to offer a hand whenever she fell over and mastered standing up entirely on her own right then and there. My mom and I watched her do it. One of those bittersweet moments (one of many yet to come, I'm sure). So proud, but at the same time...

Megan related things are going smoothly. I'll be 35 weeks this Thursday. Wow! I should really get my hospital bag packed. You'd think after my night in the hospital last week, I'd be packed the same day I was discharged. But I'm so not. Megan's clothes are still in a box in the closet, waiting for me to make a few alterations to the dresser before I unpack. And I still haven't rearranged the master bedroom to get the bassinet set up the way I'd like. I suppose the urgency hasn't set in yet. I need someone to kick me in the butt and get me going. For now, I'm going to go watch "The Nanny" reruns. Maybe I'll be motivated enough to back a hospital bag during commercial breaks?

Supercenter not so super yet

So... unless absolutely necessary, I highly suggest any and all Bakersfieldians avoid the new Walmart for at least a week or two. James and I braved the crowds because we needed to get a specific car seat to replace the one that was in the accident, and every other store in town was out of stock. We'd be less picky, but insurance will be reimbursing us for a "comparable car seat", so to minimize possible problems, we got the same brand at about the same price. Not the exact same seat, since the model we had was 2 years old, but close enough. Therefore, we had no choice but to go to the new Supercenter on its opening day (well, we did have a choice, but it was brave the crowd or keep Cadence in a car seat she's almost too big for just for our convenience)

It was a mad house! We expected as much, but it didn't make it any less frustrating. We parked in front of Lowes and walked over to the Walmart rather than brave the throng of cars and customers in front of Walmart (and we were not the only ones that did so, so even the Lowes lot was busy).

Cadence loves her new car seat, at least until we put it in the car. Even when I put her in to adjust the straps to fit her, she was kicking her legs like it was the coolest thing ever. I very much doubt she'll like it half as much once she's staring out the back window of our rental car.

Oh yes, Geico is covering the bulk of the cost of our temporary rental car (we pay about $1.50/day over the $25/day that Geico covers). Which means we're enjoying a 2009 Chevy Cobalt right now, with all the perks that newer cars come with that our 2005 didn't. It's going to be hard to say good-bye, at least for James. He's enjoying driving a car that he fits in. I'm not allowed to drive it, since I'm not on the paperwork, so James now has to run my errands with me.

Not much else to say, really. James and I are mostly recovered from the accident. Even my bruises are fading and the sore neck is only a problem when I feel for it. James is back to work and finding he's a little more sore than he originally thought, but it's mild enough he can work through it, and his bosses are encouraging him to take it easy. Cadence still seems to have no bumps or bruises or soreness to get over. We did call up her doctor, but when he heard she was eating and sleeping well, he wasn't concerned enough to schedule an appointment. We weren't either, but we figured we should call just in case.

Oh, while at Walmart, James and I did pick up Cadence's birthday present, since they had it in stock. It's basically the cheapest play kitchen we could find, and after opening the box, I'll admit there's a reason it's almost half the price of the next cheapest one. However, once it's put together, it should do it's job quite nicely. It may not outlast Megan and Cadence and be waiting around for any future kids we might have, but it should last through Megan and Cadence before we feed it to the dump:

Accident

Let me begin by apologizing! I posted a picture on Facebook, intending to write a nice long blog post once Cadence went down for bed, but ended up being away from a computer until just now.

Last night, the three of us were in a pretty dramatic-looking car accident. Not giving out a ton of details, since I was asleep and only woke up really once it was all over (was awake but not fully aware of what was going on). First and foremost, we are all fine. A little sore, a little bruised, a little shaken up, but fine. Cadence's worst seems to be a bit lip and apparently she has a little shiner coming in (or so I'm told). James is fine, the guy could probably be thrown off a cliff and only complain about his bum ankle acting up as he walks away and brushes the dirt off his pants. It seems I'm the worst for wear and that's only because I bruise easily. Nasty bruise from the seat belt across my shoulder that'll probably have me wincing when I raise my arm for the next few days.

I did end up going into the hospital last night. We'd felt Megan moving, but for everyone's peace of mind we went to get a full check-up done. She is 100% a-okay. We even got an extra ultrasound, where she was measuring a week and a half ahead of her due date and a whopping 5lbs 9oz already! One pound more and she'll be ask big as Cadence was when she was born (assuming the ultrasound was accurate, but with a 2 pound margin of error... who knows? Maybe she'll just have a big head and long legs!) It's a good thing we did go in. Around 9pm, there were some pretty regular contractions, 2-4 minutes apart, but they stopped them and kept me overnight just to be sure all was well.

The accident itself looks pretty dramatic, and a few prayers (maybe more than a few?) have been sent up in thanks to Heavenly Father for watching out for our little family. Now we're just waiting to hear back about the car! But that drama can wait until after a nice hot shower to work a few kinks out of my neck. Darn hospital beds...

Dinner Out and Baby Dolls

James's financial aid and a larger-than-recently-normal paycheck came in this week. While a good chunk of it is being spent rather responsibly (two small credit cards paid off in full!), we've also taken advantage of it and gotten those small things we keep meaning to get but never have the spare change for. And then, a tiny bit has gone towards things that aren't the most "responsible" but are more blog-worthy than a new pair of sneakers, lol.

First and foremost, with a baby sister on the way, Cadence got herself a new baby doll. She was cute and charming and loving as we handed it to her in the store. She happily cuddled and kissed the doll's face and held on to it like it was her favorite thing in the world. Once we got home, however... let the torture begin. Dangling the baby by a leg as a cat toy, gleefully slamming baby's head against the linoleum in the entry way and cackling as she does so (well, okay, squealing with delight, not cackling!), and dumping the baby on the floor and walking over her to get to whatever else has caught her eye.

Thank goodness Megan will weigh a bit more than the baby doll and might be a little harder to dangle in front of the cats by one leg. We'll have to work on the "walking over her" thing... On the plus side, Cady still loves to give the doll loves and kisses, along with the abuse (was going to include a picture, but it seems blogger does not wish to cooperate with me this morning).

And the last "not-so-responsible" thing James and I did was go out on a date night. Recently "date night" has been a movie in bed after Cadence is asleep, though one time we did order a pizza and have my mom watch her for the early evening (paused the movie to pick her up for bedtime, then went back to the movie once she was asleep again). And yes, the pizza was consumed in bed, as well as drinking straight from the 2-liter of soda we'd picked up to go with it, lol.

Cadence's Aunt Jen came over to watch her and we went out. First we went to Logan's Roadhouse, which was pretty good all said and done. I ordered a small entree, because, sure enough, the complimentary rolls, peanuts, and my ordered side salad filled me up before the entrees even arrived. It's a pretty typical dinner-out occurence for me.

Then off to the Condor's hockey game. James and I don't go often, but we do enjoy a game now and then. In fact, one of our first dates as an actual couple was hockey game with Emilee and Jeremy. James actually has one of the tickets from that night still. Not on purpose. He's just been using it as a bookmark since then. Last night's game was a bit of a disappointment. Condor's got their butts kicked badly and didn't even make up for it with a good fight at the end. They'd kinda given up at the third period and weren't even really attempting to score, just keep the puck away from their side so the other team couldn't beat them even more.

So, back to life as we know it. Cadence's first birthday is next month, though we're having a small family gettogether for it the weekend before. Cramming a dozen or so other people into our tiny apartment. I sure hope everyone showers. Haha.

Quick Megan updates

And welcome to week 32! :-) Only 8 weeks until my due date, so as few as 6 weeks if Megan makes her debut as early as Cadence did, or as many as 10 if she's as stubborn as myself and my siblings were when it comes to deadlines. Still, we're getting pretty darn close to D-day!

We had our bi-weekly check-up this morning. Bright and early, first appointment of the doctor's day and everything! And, lucky me, I got an ultrasound. No print-outs to share, and she kept her face turned just right that we couldn't get a shot of it. So all we saw was the top of her head, her heartbeat (and a few hiccups) and the doctor confirmed that Megan is indeed a Megan, and isn't going to pop out a Gabriel. Of course, the Gabriel thing still has a slim chance of happening, nothing's certain until she's out, but with two doctors saying "girl", I'm thinking we can safely assume...

And even though I hate this month's belly shot, here you go. September 15th (28 weeks) and October 15th (32 weeks), side by side. I've filled out more, that's for sure:

Photo Smorgasbord

I just love her grin on this one. If it wasn't for that grin, this picture would have been deleted, lol, but I guess I don't look too bad:

She was watching ICarly. I leave it on Nick most of the time nowadays, if the TV's even on, because the shows amuse her:

This is her just being sweet and cuddly with my leg. She loves to use my legs as pillows, though she never stays still very long. Actually, I was lucky to get this picture. Seconds later she was up and running again:
And her favorite pasttime, mirrors! She goes nuts over mirrors. We intend to put one in her room somewhere because she loves them so much:
Her afternoon nap. She'd conked out and I was so pleased she'd fallen asleep before 5pm, I just let her sleep on the floor for awhile, but couldn't resist a photo:

Camera is recharged... Here's proof!

I managed to find the battery charger on a fluke. I was cleaning up some other things and the next thing I know, voila, there's the battery charger. Charged the batteries overnight and got a few pictures. Unfortunately, Cadence was more fascinated with the camera than with posing. However, I did get video of her walking. It's not the cute clumsy toddling she was doing a week ago. She's gotten a little too proficient at it for that, sadly (she even stumbled a bit today and caught herself instead of falling). But, still cute!

And I was going to post a new pic of me and Cadence smooshing cheeks together, but you can tell I haven't gotten much sleep recently, so I choose this one instead. Enjoy her dazed look. I'll get more pictures up eventually:

Cat Scratches

I desperately need to find my battery charger so I can get my camera up and running again. I haven't taken pictures of Cadence for almost a month now (not that she's changed drastically in the past month). I also want to take a video of her walking before she gets too proficient at it. She's got the walking thing down pretty solid and walks more than crawls lately. She's also attempted running already, which is pretty funny since she can run about 6 or 7 steps before falling forward. She's learned to only run if she's got something soft she's running towards (like moving from the couch to the chair or something). She's also learned how to get herself off of the couch or our bed by swinging her legs down first. Smart girl. It only took me allowing her to slide off the bed a dozen or so times (into a laundry pile or a blanket) to figure it out.

Of course, instead of searching high and low for my charger, I'm here... blogging... because I am a blog addict. In my defense, I spent a fair bit of time searching for it already. Cadence misplaced it, though, which means it could be just about anywhere. The one place it isn't is anywhere near the computer desk, where I normally keep it.

I thought of pictures because Cadence has two scratches across the back of her head. I can't say she didn't deserve them, and Taz only got yelled at to stop her, not for actually doing it. She ran off and once Cadence was playing happily, we went to pet Taz a bit. Despite Cadence's young age, Taz was more than justified. Cadence's new favorite thing is to grab a handful of Taz's fur and skin and drag her. Taz puts up with quite a bit and just meows for help, so James and I try to correct Cadence's behavior and get her to "be soft" (which currently involves patting the cat rather than dragging her around). But I guess after a week of putting up with it, Taz decided to teach Cadence the lesson James and I were failing at getting across. I don't know if it worked long term, but I will say, Cadence got scratched last night and hasn't once tried to drag Taz around this morning.

Despite their disagreement last night, however, Taz and Cadence have kissed and made up and are as affectionate as ever. I really need to get more pictures of them together. I wonder if a year from now Cadence will be sleeping at the foot of Cadence's bed, rather than mine as she's done for the past 6 years?

Meow, Mom!

So for the past week and a half or so, Cadence has been saying, over and over again, a word that sounded like "mom". At least, it often had all the necessary phonetic elements. Occasionally she'd drop the first or last "mmm", but it had me very confused. It was very strange, not the "mama" I'd expected to first hear from her, but as I listened, it just didn't sound... right. Something was odd about it that I couldn't put my finger on. I responded. Everytime she said "mom" I'd answer back. Sometimes she'd laugh, sometimes she'd ignore me, and sometimes she'd get excited and say it over and over again.

But, a few days ago, I was watching her play with Taz, our oldest cat (and Cady's adopted big sister). Taz meowed at her and Cadence instantly grinned big and repeated her "mom" sound, almost a perfect mimic of the pitch and feel of Taz's regular meow. Only then did I realize, Cadence was not saying "mom", she was meowing! A very good impersonation of Taz's meow, I might add. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. On a daily basis, Cadence spends all her time with me and three cats. One of us talks some very complicated gibberish, the other 3 have one sound that works as their language. Both make just as much sense to her, so naturally she'd pick up the easiest one first, lol.

She's getting so big. It just hit me that I need to call and make her 1-year check-up appointment soon. It's October already. November's her first birthday. I'm excited to do birthday shopping though. We're tight, but I was able to do some crazy online work to make a little spare change, and now have money specifically for getting her something for her birthday. Given how much she loves opening and closing things lately, James and I have our eye on a kitchen playset, and I've already decided how I'll rearrange her room to fit the thing in there with the not-yet-purchased toddler bed. She won't really care, I'm sure, but I'm excited.

She does enjoy new toys, though. Just yesterday, we were at the store to pass some time and I randomly handed her toys off of the shelf to see her reaction. Some she enjoys, others she could care less about. I handed her a talking phone, though, and she refused to give it back. When I took it away she got mad, when I tried to distract her she would give the new toy only a brief glance before going back to the phone. So... guess what we walked out of the store with? LoL. Totally shouldn't have, but she loves the thing. She's spent hours playing with it already and we barely bought it last night!

30 week Drs appointment

Had our most recent appointment for Megan this morning. I fear I've given up on ever receiving an ultrasound from this doctor. It does make me wonder whether I'd know if Megan was a boy or a girl or even had all her fingers and toes and working kidneys if I hadn't requested the anatomy scan at 20 weeks. I like to imagine he would have made a point of doing an ultrasound at the 28 week appointment if I hadn't gotten the anatomy scan. But, I think he won't be getting any recommendations from me any time soon if anyone asks me for a good OB in town.

Anyway, Megan's doing well. At least, she has a good steady heartbeat and that's always a good sign, right? The doctor had me a little worried at first because he frowned for a few seconds and held the doppler over the heartbeat longer than I'm used to, but then he smiled and told me all was well. I thinking he was just unable to get a number on his doppler to record fetal heart rate or something.

Cadence went with me today, so James could run an errand with the car, and did surprisingly well. She charmed everyone in the waiting room and even did well when I wasn't holding her during my exam and when I was being weighed. The doctor said she even sat quietly and looked at us when Megan's heartbeat was audible.

Got some blood test results back. I don't have any issues with gestational diabetes, but I have finally crossed the line to being anemic. I've been borderline for years, but never actually in that official range. Until now. No big deal, apparently I'm only barely in the range of what's considered anemic. My doctor didn't seem too concerned and said if I did better about taking my vitamins (I never seem to remember...) it should keep the worst of the problem at bay and put me back over that line. But, the mild anemia would explain the headaches, dizziness, and sore muscles I was prepared to complain about.

By the way, as greatful as I am to be pregnant and have Megan on her way, I'm so beyond ready to not be pregnant for awhile, lol. I think I want to enjoy having my body to myself and just focus on the two I'll have on the outside for a few years. On the bright side, Megan should be here in 10 weeks (only 8 weeks if she comes as early as Cadence did). We're down to the wire here! Who's with me and can't wait to meet her?