Currently

I know this is like 4 days late but it's been sitting here as a draft for days now and I just figured I'd finish it up and post it even if it is lacking a "Cole currently.."

Mama is...
worrying about everything when it comes to my pregnancy and what will happen after I have the baby. I can explain more in another post.

listening to ... Not much. I started an audiobook I didn't really like. It was The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb. It was a recommendation of a friend and while the plot sounded interesting I just could not get into the main character/ narrator. He was not very likable. I didn't even feel sorry for him when his wife cheated on him. Eventually, I found myself dreading listening to it. Luckily, Perks of Being a Wallflower came to the rescue (I had placed a hold on it a month ago) and it's been holding my attention for a few car rides home.

wishing I had not heated up the apple cider I'm drinking. It tastes much better cold. And I'm also wishing my legs and ankles and feet would stop feeling like I ran a 5K yesterday. Wishing I didn't have to take this medicine for the next three months. The medicine combined with the pregnancy is really taking a toll on my body.

observing that my due date is only 3 months from now. I don't want to be that mom who wishes these days away but this pregnancy is anything but normal and anything but fun. So I'm looking forward to that day in January when I can hold my baby girl in one arm, and hold my son in another.

My kind of beautiful.

Orange mountains. They are no more thanks to the hurricane blowing away all of the leaves. But when they were alive and blazing two weekends ago we took advantage of the beauty and spent the day outside. Here are those pictures.
Part 1 of our day: A picnic and very short hike at Split Rock
Part 2 of our day: Hay ride and farm
animal feeding at Kelder's Farm in Kerhonkson.

Keith took his cameras along for the day and four of those photos are interspersed in here with his watermark. The quality of his photos would be much better if I took the high resolution images from the computer, but being the wife of a busy photographer I stole them from his Facebook page and saved them onto my phone. I published this post using my Blogger app, which is what I have been doing lately for lack of free time. I'm sure you will see the irony in all of this ... somewhere.

Enjoy the sweet darling that is my baby boy.
"I am your baby, Mama."

Currently

Mama is
Feeling anxious. I'm pregnant with contractions. One doctor tells me one thing, another tells me something else. I go on Monday for a cervical check. Hopefully that will ease my anxiety.

Drinking apple cider and water. I also drink lots of black tea in the morning.

Looking for the perfect weekend in which I don't have to do any work. Like any other working mother would, I hate bringing my work home with me.

Making homemade pizza on Fridays again.  After last Friday's nightmarish outcome (Dada and I had a breakdown in communication and kind words were not issued), we've decided I make dinner on Fridays. I love to make pizza. So that's the new tradition around here.

Dreaming of life after this baby. I'm 26 weeks pregnant now. This baby is alive and swimming inside of me. Love feeling her, but I can't wait to meet her.


Cole is

Feeling sad and sometimes angry that Mama has to go to work. Sometimes Dada will hear Cole say, "I don't like Mama..." Dada knows this can't be true, so he helps Cole to articulate what he really doesn't like, which is always "Mama goes to work."

Drinking water. We no longer need to create a pipeline of cow milk into our house because ever since we replaced the bottle nipple cap with a sippy cap, Cole has not been drinking gallons of milk before bed. No. Now he likes to have an hard boiled egg before bed. Go figure.

Looking for his piggy bank, flag, pumpkin - basically anything that could break or be dangerous, he must find it. But most importantly, he looks for Kiwi and Clem, but mostly Kiwi, since she's easier to find and too overweight to run away as quickly as agile Clem.

Making mental and linguistic leaps and bounds. He's always been smart and can speak well, but lately, he's been adding adjectives and adverbs to his speech that are astounding. Of course, it's mostly stuff Dada and I say, but he's using the words correctly. He's also understanding so much more than he did before. This also means he's finding things to be " 'cary "and so we can't read or watch the Lorax (the Onceler freaks him out) or read Where the Wild Things Are (Max's costume is too realistic). I know this is a phase, but I hate to see my little boy frightened at all.

Dreaming of holding the baby and kissing the baby. He gives my belly a kiss every night and comes to greet my belly whenever he sees it exposed (funnily enough this often happens while I'm on the toilet).

The great pumpkin debacle

We learned a valuable lesson this weekend: never let your child hold (for an extended period of time) the pumpkin you intend to cook. Because that pumpkin will become your child's friend forever.

Even after buying Cole a second pumpkin from Wright's farm stand he bawled at the sight of Dada's knife next to the pumpkin we had purchased at Adam's. Instead of making our long awaited pumpkin stew, we were forced to take the pumpkin off the chopping block and return it to its rightful owner.

The little things

I had a really crappy day today. In fact, with this medicine I'm on to keep the contractions at bay, life just hasn't held the same exuberance as it used to. I know I'm growing a baby and it should be a wonderful time right now, but I'm constantly living in panic, in fear my cervix is going to dilate or that I'm going to have to go on bed rest. And if it's none of those things, I'm feeling the wicked side effects of this medicine. Being a teacher and being a parent while also being pregnant with complications is no easy feat.

So when I had this brief conversation with Cole tonight before he went to sleep, I gave him a few extra kisses.

Cole: "I'm your baaaaby"
(he says this a lot)
Mama: "Why are you my baby?"
I usually always respond with "yes you are," but tonight, since he's been on a "Why" kick for the past few weeks, I figured I'd turn the tables.
Cole: "Because I love you."

Heaven.

It's National Hug your Piggy Bank Week

Cole loves his piggy bank. He loves it so much that he carries it around the house and regularly asks us to give him money so he can insert it into the slot. It's become almost a ritual, sort of like giving the cats treats has become a ritual (more on what that is doing to Kiwi's figure in another post).

His requests are very comical and probably a precursor to what he may sound like in his adolescence.
"Dada, give me money."
"Mama, can I have money?"

Last week the inevitable happened. He dropped his piggy bank and it broke into pieces. This happened while I was at work. The very next day Dada produced the second and last piggy bank we had on reserve (he received two as presents). Since he was given the new piggy bank he has promised to take good care of it.
"I pet it," he says as he caresses it.
"I take good care of it," he says as he hugs it to his chest.

It is very sweet, but let's not kid ourselves- you and I both know where all of this hugging and caressing is going to lead.

Hugging the piggy

Pardon the (sometimes out of focus) iPhone pics, but my photographer husband has been hiding the "house" DSLR so that a certain pair of toddler hands don't hug that too.

Trying to get a little bit closer to the piggy.

Broken piggy

"I hug Piggy."

Currently link up

Mama is currently...

Writing part of this post from my high risk doctor's office waiting for my cervical check. I think it's going to be fine and long like usual but there's always that small seed of doubt...
Have no fear. It's still long! Yay for another week of bed rest avoided.

Laughing at Cole as he chases Kiwi from the living room to the office and back again. Giggling all the way. Their relationship keeps growing as he matures and she gets used to him. He even got his first scratch from her this week. (I'll have to do a post about their budding relationship soon.) Laughing at Cole as he rocks on his rocking horse in his sunglasses and (later on) brushes his stomach with two toothbrushes in his bathtub. Laughing when he drinks his sippy and says with a smile "That was terrific!"

Dreaming about getting more sleep. This medicine I'm on makes my heart pound furiously, then makes me dizzy and then hurts my head - for almost two hours after I take it. So I have to figure out some clever schedule of taking it where it doesn't affect my teaching but also doesn't affect my sleep. Now that's what you call a real dilemma....Dreaming about my day last Saturday with Cole. Up until 3 p.m., when I had seriously lost my patience, Cole and I had a really fun morning and early afternoon hanging around our house and our town. We definitely got some quality time in, ate some good snacks and got plenty dirty playing with pink mud! I'll share some pics at the end of this post.

Craving chocolate. Good news is that Keith did a photo shoot for a chocolate company this past weekend and brought home 25 chocolate bars. So I mentioned this to my new co-workers (who I really enjoy working with, by the way) and they were all "bring it in! Share the wealth!" Are you kidding me? My chocolate! Mine!

Anticipating a weekend visit from my college friend who's coming to New Paltz from the city with her almost year old daughter and husband. I'm so excited to meet her daughter, Zoe, and feeling kind of bad that it takes Nicole visiting ME in order for that to happen. Good news is that Nicole is the last person to hold grudges so I'm sure she does not have any negative feelings toward me about it....Also anticipating Open House. Open house is Thursday night. Starts after 7 and ends after 9- past my bedtime! I don't enjoy Open House because I won't actually see Cole until Friday night. Because I leave so early in the morning to get to work on time each day, I don't see Cole in the morning unless it's the weekend. So it will be almost 48 hours between Wednesday night and the next time I see both of my boys. I'll pick up Cole Friday afternoon and see Keith Friday night. Sucks big time. But we'll get through it and we'll have an extra long weekend to spend together.

Blog redesign

I am sure you've noticed the lovely new look my blog has.

I wish I could take credit, but I have no graphic design skills whatsoever. I don't know HTML and have only ever used Blogger's templates. I like a simple looking blog, but I've always wanted it to look just a little bit prettier. I'm a writer by nature, not a designer (although I know plenty of people who are both). My husband can attest to this.

It's this lady over at Harvesting Kale who is one of those people. She's funny and talented and makes her blog look simple yet beautiful. She has so much fun doing it that she offered to redesign mine! I totally took her up on it and am so happy I did.

Thanks Randalin! If you love this redesign as much as I do, please click on this link and vote for her blog on Circle of Moms. It's just two simple clicks.

On his way

Tonight Cole was playing in the living room while I attempted to rinse some quinoa in hopes of making it for lunch tomorrow. He waddles into the kitchen with a tired look on his face and says, "It's time for bed, Mama."

Mouth drops to floor. Quinoa gets left in strainer. Mama scoops Cole up and we head straight for the bath. We were on a roll and making great time. After the bath, Cole runs naked into the hallway, stops, and grabs his penis. This is the classic signal that he has to pee. I've seen this before. The last time he did this, I let him pee on a towel because I didn't think I'd get him in there in time (that time he had trickled a little). But this time? I was ready. I scoop him up and bring him straight to the potty. He sits there. I run the water and explain to him that the sound of the water might help him pee. What does he do instead? He proceeds to poop in the toilet for the next 25 minutes. Why so long? Well, Cole can't just poop on the potty. He has to poop, get up, walk down the stool, look at his poop, then flush. Repeat 700 times. Very ceremonious stuff, this saying good-bye to poop business.

Finally, finally, he was done. But no pee. Not once. Like usual, my kid doesn't follow some textbook example of a toddler (where they pee first then learn to poop). And I'm okay with that. I know he'll get there eventually. He's already on his way.