Annie's Antics

I’ve always said that Annie was born into this world as a ‘terrible 2’ and never has stopped.  Her strong willed personality is a daily conquest for us.  I’ve read lots of words to describe a child as mine but the one that makes me chuckle a little is ‘spirited.’  Yes, Annie you are indeed spirited!  It’s such a nice way to say your child is strong willed, opinionated, feisty, relentless and the opposite of laid back.  Let me divulge you in a few short stories to give you some insight into our daily lives living with a ‘spirited’ child.

Let’s start with my favorite moment of just last week {insert sarcasm}.  Annie had her 1^st dentist appointment, which I knew was going to be a real ‘treat’ for me to hold her down for.  But what I didn’t realize was the real struggle was going to take place in the waiting room.  We arrived, I get Annie settled playing with some toys and I’m filling out this ridiculous, elaborate paperwork that is asking for a full medical history for a 22 month old.  A mom and her child exit the back dentist office and head for the door to leave and all of a sudden, Annie freaks out, runs towards this lady and is saying “Mama! Mama!” and latches onto her leg.  I grabbed my spirited child and going “Annie, no get over here.”  This lady is stopped in her tracks while I’m trying to unlatch my child from her leg.  This mom leaves and Annie goes NUTS!  Screaming and pounding on the door saying “Mama! Mama!”  Every time I try to grab her to comfort her, she hits me in the face.   Then she starts running over to everyone in the waiting room, doing the same thing.  ‘Mama!’ and latching onto these other Mom’s legs.  I’m grabbing her and am right in her face saying, “Annie, I’m YOUR MAMA!!”  And she kicks and hits me making me look like a child abductor of my own child.  Then the dentist comes out to talk to another parent and she runs over, latches onto his leg screaming DADDA!  Oh ma gaud was I mortified by this point!  So I grab her, pin her underneath my arm, sideways across my lap and grab the clipboard and start filling out the paperwork as quickly as possible with her trying to escape my arms.  At this point, I have zero tolerance and she is pretty much hanging upside down off my lap while I’m vigorously filling out paperwork and she is screaming at the top of her lungs.  What a sight.  Needless to say the actual dentist appointment went pretty well, given she was screaming, the dentist had a great view of the inside of her mouth and we were in and out pretty quickly at that point.  Moment of the year right there.

 

My spirited child is also a real joy at dinner time.  If she’s not presented with a hot dog for each meal, she arches her back, screams and throws her plate on the floor.  Lovely.  I use to give in and give her whatever she wanted but I’m so over the meal time battle and have gotten to the point where I don’t care if she goes to bed without eating dinner.  It’s a rare occasion when she will actually eat good for us.  What she likes one day, she refuses the next.  I always try to give her 3 items at meals, 2 of which I know she has ate in the past and maybe 1 new item so it’s not like I don’t give her options.  She used to love macaroni and cheese and now I can’t get her to even taste it.  We waste way too much food at our house because my 22 month old will purse her lips and refuse to even try stuff.  I would never make her eat something she doesn’t like but what kills me is she won’t even try it, and I mean at all.  I’m pretty sure she would eat a 12 pack of hotdogs in one day if I’d let her.  Kid’s obsession with hot dogs is a little strange.

While we are on the food topic, how about my banana story?  We keep bananas on the counter and Annie will run over to them, and point and say ‘banana’ so I give her one and she was eating them when she asked for one.  Then one day, I grabbed one for her and peeled it and she instantly threw herself to the floor screaming .  “Annie, what the heck, you just asked for this?!”  So then I was stuck eating about 3 bananas a day because this is what she would do each time.  We finally figured it out.  One day I grabbed the bananas off the counter and just handed the whole bundle to her, she grabbed the banana she wanted and ate it fine.  I’m stunned, thinking…all this time I’ve been eating all these bananas and it’s because she wanted to choose which one it was, so many struggles could have been avoided if I knew this.  What 1 year old is that picky over which banana out of the bundle they get?  Well my spirited child is.

Annie normally eats a cup of individual yogurt every morning.  I happened to have a pint of yogurt that was getting close to expiring and wasn’t going to eat it myself so I had a hunch that Annie wouldn’t eat it if it wasn’t in her usual container of yogurt so I took one of her individual cups and washed it out and spooned the left over pint of yogurt into it and tried to give it to her.  Nope, she saw me do it and was not having it, wanted a fresh one that was sealed.  The next day, I then tricked her, pulled out an individual cup, pretended like I was taking the seal off of it for her and then quickly swapped it for the old cup of the other yogurt I had from the previous day.  She had a hunch something was up but didn’t actually see me make the switch.  That kid examined that yogurt cup so thoroughly, looking for any signs of my tampering.  I couldn’t believe the way she looked it over.  I was on pins and needles waiting for her to throw it on the ground, yogurt splattering everywhere while she goes into full tantrum mode.  Luckily not the case, I ended up fooling her and she did eat it but it’s just mind boggling how she is on to us all the darn time!

Nothing is more ‘fun’ then the daily outfit battle we have every morning.  I know having a girl especially sets us up for these battles but to have it start around 20 months old?!  Seems crazy early.  She wakes up fine, eats her yogurt and then when I start pulling out clothes from her dresser, that’s when it goes downhill from there.  As soon as I reach in, she runs over and gets really mad.  I’m open to seeing what she wants to wear but most of the time it’s the craziest outfits and I’m not letting her out of the house looking ridiculous.  Over the summer I don’t know how many times I had to tell her no, you cannot wear your swimsuit to church today.  Many mornings, getting her dressed involves pinning her down and forcing the clothes on her while she is kicking and hitting me in the face.  I’ve tried the whole laying out 2 outfits to let her decide and with no luck she goes straight to her dresser, not happy with my narrowed selection.  Once she is dressed and I have sweat running down me, then comes the shoes.  Sometimes the shoes is worse than the outfit battle.  She has these really cute Ralph Lauren hot pink shoes and they’ve become a favorite of hers.  The problem is that she drives her daycare teacher nuts because she they are too easy for her to take on and off constantly all day long.  And let’s face it, hot pink shoes does not go with every outfit.  At night I’ve gotten to the point where I let her wear whatever she wants to bed, go ahead spirited child and wear polka dots and stripes, I don’t care!  But she thinks she should then get to wear her hot pink shoes to bed.  We’ve tried slippers and she is so demanding on those darn pink tennies!   Then we have to fight her to get those darn shoes off before bed.  It’s totally exhausting.

Then there are the car rides.  Nothing is worse than being in a small enclosed space with a spirited child screaming on the top of her lungs.  We try to plan any long trips around her nap/bedtime schedule because it is just brutal riding with her for long periods of time.  She isn’t one who likes to sit still so being strapped down is the main issue.  And for the life of us, we can’t figure out how she at times can escape out of her car seat straps.  It’s like watching Houdini escape a strait jacket, totally mind boggling how she can do it when they are on her tight when we strap her in.  Even strapping her in is an ordeal at times when she is fighting hard against being put into her car seat.   We’ve been thru 3 different car seats with this child, it’s not the car seat, it’s her.  Recently, my car dvd player stopped working, making the 15 minute ride to and from daycare especially brutal lately.  She loves it when I sing Old McDonald Had A Farm to her but let me tell you, 15 minutes of that song gets old fast but ANYTHING to keep her content I’ll do!

Restaurants, church and places where kids should sit still are also a joyous event for us.  Anymore, the idea of having a child sit perfectly still or to color quietly I’ve learned is an impossibility.  I don’t care if she is running circles around our table at a restaurant or playing in the aisle at church.  As long as she isn’t being too disruptive to those around us, then I’m the one with the child on the loose.  It’s far more disruptive to try to pin her down and make her sit quietly than it is to let her run around.   Kids just want to be kids. 

We rarely take Annie with us to grocery stores.  Why?  Because again she, likes to run around.  Running around is okay but she wants to touch everything or eat a random chip off the floor and that’s when I start hyperventilating.   Won’t sit in the child seating of the cart, won’t be good if we move her to the cart area, but for whatever reason she wants to ride under the cart which I hate.  First off it’s gross under there.  And not to mention I’m always terrified I’m going to run over her finger or a foot because she’s goofing off down there.  I’m always enamored when I see these kids her age sitting contently in the child seat of the cart.  I turn my back for a second and Annie has figured out how to get out of the seat strap and is standing up, ready to fall to her death.   I usually leave the store forgetting 10 things and end up having to go back.  It’s just too much work.

She normally follows me around the house.  But the other day she was really getting into everything.  I was trying to get ready in the bathroom and I step away for literally maybe 30 seconds because heaven forbid I had to pee, which is just in a separate part of our bathroom and I come back to the main bathroom to find the bathtub running and no Annie to be found.  That stinker turned the water on and then ran and started tearing all my shoes off my shoe rack.  Everywhere she goes it’s just like bombs are being set off behind her. 

The one morning I decide to have brunch with my friend’s, which never happens and is like a treat for me, I get a text from Aaron saying “Annie just completely erased my entire phone.”  Um how?!  Apparently there is a special combination of buttons that if you press exactly in sync, your phone will say in the display ‘erasing’ and Aaron tried to stop it and shut it off but it was too late, it erased every single thing on his phone.  Thankfully he had mostly everything backed up but it still took him nearly a half a day to recover it all.  Good work Annie {insert sarcasm}, it was impressive to say the least. 

Our next child has to be laid back and the complete opposite of our first born spirited child right?!  She has to be!  It can’t get worst?!  Annie does make the thought of caring for a newborn look easy compared to a day chasing her.  Or maybe the more honest and terrifying thought I have is the one of having to care for a newborn while Annie is running loose and out of control doing who knows what.  I know Annie’s spit fire personality will mean she will do great things and have lots of drive and passion in life but to be honest some days it’s hard to remind myself of that.  Sometimes at the end of a day, I reflect on that screaming car ride home or the fact that she threw her plate of spaghetti on the ground hollering for a hot dog or that she leached onto another Mom’s leg making me look crazy and I just sit and chuckle to myself and I think my God do I love that kid!  I can’t imagine her any other way. Everything she puts us thru sure does make life interesting and her spirit is what makes her my Annie.   Can’t wait for the REAL terrible 2’s to begin…. now those will be the stories!     

Baby C Update

Great news -- my second perinatal appointment went great today!   As I had mentioned in my previous post, I felt more confident and reassured going into this appointment because I feel like my tummy has grown and Baby C has been on the move, which were all good signs to me that all is well.  The ultrasound tech at this appointment actually was telling me during the ultrasound that everything was looking  good, which I know they really aren’t obligated to say one way or another how the ultrasound is going but she was giving me reassurance thru the ultrasound and even told me that Baby C was measuring right where she needed to be.  Wheew!  What a relief, I actually felt like I could relax and enjoy watching the ultrasound this time around.

When the doctor came in, she further confirmed all looks good and they checked again for any open tube defects and again none are present.  At this point, she says it’s pretty rare and highly unlikely that Baby C has an open tube defect, what they won’t be able to determine until she is born is if she has a closed tube defect, but again the chances of that is less than an open tube scenario.  It sounds like to me that closed tube defects aren’t nearly as scary or life impairing as open tube from what I’m gathering.  Again, I refuse to put any trust in Google and have made a promise to myself {and to God} that I won’t Google anything unless we are certain we have a need to further educate ourselves in something that becomes our reality, in the meantime ‘what-ifs’ research does no good and only creates unnecessary stress and worry.

The doctor also made an offhand comment that made me realize again that her growth and health is still nothing short of a miracle compared to my AFP levels.  She said that when she started to review my ultrasound results she didn’t realize it was for my ultrasound, then when she realized it was for me, she ‘gasped with excitement’ – her words.  So basically again since my AFP levels are so bad, she’s beyond thrilled that I’ve made it over half way thru this pregnancy with no issues.   It is beyond humbling to me to know that I’m truly fortunate and that God has answered our prayers. 

I don’t need to be seen again by my perinatal doctor until another 4 weeks from now – or basically at the beginning of my 3^rd trimester.  Until then, I’m going to remain hopeful, optimistic and prayerful that all will continue going well.  And especially prayerful that I continue to feel growth and movement because that to me was one of the signs in between my last appointments that gave me the most comfort.  Who knew getting bigger in pregnancy could ever make me feel so good?!   Since my last appointment I did change my diet substantially and am eating a lot more protein and a lot less junk.  It hasn’t been completely perfect (i.e. doughnut yesterday for breakfast) but I think my significant improvements certainly have helped the cause too. 

So that’s my update – I hope I continue to only provide similar great news for future appointments! 

RESTORED Health

New year, new you, right?  I’ve never been one to stick to a resolution but usually have a few that I’d like to accomplish but never more have I had a strong desire to actually fulfill this year’s resolution, summed up in these words: RESTORED HEALTH.  I have felt like garbage for, well about the last 10 months and I’m tired of it!

 

2015 started off fine.  I felt great and all was good.  I’ve always had anxiety all my life but it was always mild and never really interfered much with my life.  The week and months following Annie’s birth, my anxiety ramped up big time.  In 2014, about 6 months after Annie’s birth, I finally felt like myself again and my anxiety subsided.  Continued to feel great until around late Spring 2015, I’m not quite sure what set it off, I think it may have been the idea of building a house possibly or the fact that I had a few blood pressure readings that came in high at routine doctor visits but my anxiety came back on and it really inhibited many areas of my life.  Then it started to subside but in July it hit hard again, I think it may have been the idea of expanding our family that may have triggered it – not sure but regardless I was really struggling and my anxiety made me think that I had more health problems than I actually did.  Reassuringly, after lots of blood work, a few EKG tests, a neurological exam, several x-rays, a rush to urgent care because I thought I was having a heart attack (btw, found out you don't go to Urgent Care, you go to the ER if you truly think you are having one - duh. Also found out it's a good way to get bumped to the front of the line)… doctors confirmed that I’m just an anxious nelly, creating my own false health fire drills and I just needed to chill out.  Point taken!  Geesh, I felt like a looney, crazy person.  Stop being a hot mess and pull yourself together already, I’d tell myself.

Middle of the year, my boss left his position.  I was handed double duties at work and the stress of getting everything done at work was overbearing.  I was never told I couldn’t take PTO or time away but felt like I really couldn’t.  The stress of work continued pretty much up thru the beginning of December and now my new boss is starting to alleviate my work load and things just recently started feeling more manageable at work. 

Backing back up to the middle of the year, I got pregnant.  On purpose.  Good timing right?!  If I had to do a re-do, I would have maybe waited another year but fact of the matter is, I got pregnant and if it wasn’t meant to be, then God wouldn’t have given me another pregnancy when I deliberately asked for one.  Then came the 1^st trimester woes, fatigue, nauseousness but worst of all were severe headaches.    I’ve never been a headache sufferer nor did I have them when I was pregnant with Annie but these headaches left me where I felt dizzy and faint almost daily.  Insert anxiety with our house transition and I would say my overall health was suffering.  I felt like garbage, all the time.

 

Fast forward to second trimester.  We finally get all moved in and settled and my headaches are becoming less severe, I’m starting to have moments when I feel like myself again and my anxiety had been manageable.  Life starts to feel normal somewhat.  Then I get a call about my pregnancy blood test, you know the one where my alpha fetoproteins levels are off the chart and my baby has a chance of having a neural tube defect?  I crashed and burned for a solid 2 weeks.  My headaches got out of control; I’d lay in bed and cried a lot.  Let’s not forget about those fun pregnancy hormones.  And oh ya, I’m still puking because my gagging reflexes/nauseousness is still out of control and never went away after the 1^st trimester.  Then I got a severe head cold so on top of not sleeping because of my stress/depressed state, I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to because I was so congested.  What an awesome way to start the holiday season.

Last half of December, we were delivered good news, well actually miraculous news about our baby’s health, but still was coping with the fact that rocky roads still lie ahead in this pregnancy.   As soon as our last Christmas with family was all over, I finally got all the rest I needed and the stress just started to subside, along with the headaches.  I still have this crummy head cold but overall I’m just doing a lot better.  Like 100 times better!

I actually have my next perinatal appointment tomorrow.  Rather than feeling anxious, I’m feeling hopeful and optimistic.  I feel like my belly has grown quite a bit over the last few weeks and I’ve never been so comforted by the fact that my pregnancy belly is growing because it likely means Baby C is growing, which is what we need the most in this pregnancy.  I also feel her moving quite a bit now, which also brings me joy and comfort, I just feel like these are all signs that she is healthy and well and I’m optimistic that our appointment tomorrow will go well.  Please keep us in our prayers that we are delivered good news.  I really am just starting to get to a good place physically and emotionally and the last thing I need right now is a setback.

I know that as I near my 3^rd trimester (which is a good month away yet), I do remember all too well from Annie’s pregnancy how ‘unfun’ the 3^rd trimester is and how miserable I felt last time.  I also remember the complete debilitating feeling of what a C-Section recovery all entails so that is why my resolution for 2016 isn’t GOOD health but RESTORED health.  If this baby is born in late April, it will take until mid-June to be fully recovered from my surgery and so I’m not expecting to have my health restored until the latter half of 2016 so it will take time but after feeling like garbage for the last 10ish months, you can only imagine how badly I want to feel normal and healthy again. 

Not only do I want to be healthy again but I want my whole family to be healthy.  I’ve never put such an importance on health more than I have over the last year.  My 2016 goal summed up in 2 words: RESTORED HEALTH.  And I’m confident and more determined than ever to make it happen.  Oh and maybe in 2016 let’s make a goal that I will have less depressing posts!  Seriously, can I just blog about something a little less intense for a change?! 

It's A Girl!

Although Aaron and I were never in a big hurry to have kids, we talked about our ‘imaginary’ kids as if they existed at times; it was always ‘well someday Jack and Annie’… or ‘when Jack and Annie do this or that’…  We always talked as if we were having a girl and a boy.

 

When I was pregnant with Annie, Aaron said he just had this feeling we are having all girls.  I would say before we found out Annie was a girl, I felt 75% sure the gender was a girl and Aaron felt even more confident it was a girl.  I secretly was hoping for a girl when we found out although before pregnancy, I would have told you I would have wanted a boy first.  What’s better than a big brother to a little sister?

Of course having a girl first, I was pretty goo-goo-ga-ga over all the girly stuff.  I was in my element.  Getting pregnant this time around, I somewhat wanted another girl again but a particular experience solidified my want for another girl.  I was in Palmer’s, a deli style restaurant downtown, about 2 months after Annie was born.  I was by myself waiting in line at one of the deli stands and there were these 2 little girls, under the age of 5 that were chasing each other around the island deli stand.  Their giggles were the best thing I think I’ve ever heard in my life, I can still hear and see them to this day.  I just stood there and watched them chase each other with the biggest grin on my face at how adorable they were; thinking OMG…Annie has to have a sister!  I immediately got in my car and called Aaron to tell him that we had to have 2 girls.  At this point forward, all I could envision was 2 little girls.

Growing up my sister and I were roughly 4 years apart; which is a little too far apart to really have common friends or really know enough about each other’s social lives.  If I was going to have sisters, I wanted them closer in age.  My sister and I fought a ton when we were young and we didn’t just fight, it got really physical and we literally beat the living daylights out of each other.  And for being 4 years younger than me, my sister was tough; I did not have the upper hand!  As we got older, sharing a bathroom was the worst thing to ever have to endure with a sister.  Even sitting in the car, if her knee touched my knee, it would send us into a fight.  I can see why we drove my mom nuts at times.  But you know what?  We are good friends today and outgrew petty fighting.  My sister has called me in desperate times and told me stuff she has not told anyone in our family and I have been there to help her.  When she comes to visit, she actually is the most helpful family member when it comes to giving me a hand with Annie.  We actually are complete opposites to this day but I see her for who she is, which is a really caring and compassionate person with a big heart.  We have a great relationship and her visits now are the best.  She lives in Colorado and I miss having her around more often.  Having a sister in life really is a treasure not everyone gets to have and I’m pretty lucky to have a good one to claim and be proud of.

My sister and I at my baby shower she threw for me when pregnant with Annie.  And look, we are touching shoulders without fighting or pulling each others hair, we survived all those years of fighting! #bestsistersever

When I got pregnant the second time, Aaron was 110% certain it was a girl.  I was about 64.7% certain.  And Aaron was perfectly content with having all girls, never disappointed at the idea.  With Annie, we had a nice dinner out and opened the envelope and found out together it was a girl and called our families.  This time around, I wanted something different but yet special to find out the gender.  I know these over the top gender reveal parties are a big thing right now, I think they are fun and cute but they seem like a lot of work.  I did not want to go to a lot of work for a party being we just moved and this pregnancy has left me feeling less than ideal on most days.  We had been recommended by a few people about this place in Des Moines called Prenatal Vision.  They have professional ultrasound technicians on staff and they provide the ultimate experience for live gender reveals.  So we set the appointment and invited our close family. 

When we walked into Prenatal Vision, they have a really cute boutique baby store up front.  After some paperwork, we were called back to the ultrasound room.  It was a very spacious room with soft cushy couches and chairs for our family and a huge viewing screen.  The ultrasound technician was great, I thought it was the most in-depth (2D and 3D) ultrasound and she explained very slowly everything we were seeing and what our baby was doing then she said are you ready for the reveal?  And flashed up the screen in big letters was GIRL!  Of course my family all cheered and it was so fun to all find out together.  Annie was running around the room with her cousin and we were all telling her she was going to have a little sister.  I was ECSTATIC!  My eyes were watering I was so happy.  Of course I would be happy with a boy but all I could see was those little girls running around together and my heart was full!  When we left, we had the full live ultrasound on a dvd we could play back at home along with more print out images of our baby girl.  It really was the perfect experience.

17 weeks pregnant, can't wait to find out! 

Annie and her cousin Eli playing in the waiting room

Heart!

IT"S A GIRL!! 

3D of our baby girl's sweet face

It was also really special for my Grandparents and even my Parents, they had never seen a live ultrasound like this before, back in their times, they just didn’t have that technology so this felt like a gift to them to ‘meet’ their new granddaughter in a way they have never experienced before. 

Annie checking out her sister

Annie helping the tech out

Right before we left, I whispered to Aaron… “Should we tell them the name?”   And we decided it was the right moment to tell our family the name of our baby girl.  To all my readers, you will know her as Baby C (first initial) until her arrival comes.

First family pic of 4

And thank goodness it was a girl because we were struggling with boy names.   So as you probably have figured out from the beginning of this post, many years ago we wanted Jack for our boy name.  Then it became so popular that we changed it to Jackson.  Well then that became popular and so we changed it again to Jaxon (basically pronounced the same but we could use Jax for short).  Aaron was in love with that name and as my friends started to have more and more Jackson’s, I started to lose interest.  My top 3 up to our gender reveal was Hudson, Micah and Jaxon.  And we had no good middle names that went with those options.  Aaron wasn’t big on my other names, apparently because of the Hawkeye football player, we couldn’t have a Micah Hyde.  And even though I loved Hudson, Aaron was still stuck on Jaxon.  But when it came to girl names, it was a no-brainer.  We had the first and middle name down before she was even conceived (and I get the credit for her name btw, luckily Aaron loved it).  So having a girl just took the stress out of the name game.  We never even questioned the name Annie Ashton, we had her name way before too so girl names just seem easier for us to agree on.

What also makes having a girl fun is all of Annie’s old clothes we can pull back out for Baby C.  I’m a little in love with Annie’s wardrobe and can’t wait to dress Baby C in them.  Being that my due date will put them at 2 years and 1 month apart, the seasons should match up pretty well.  We are going to get started on Baby C’s room soon, I think we will keep it pretty close to how Annie’s room is designed, which is white furniture, light grays and pinks. 

And although they will have to share a bathroom, they will have separate sinks – sister fights are inevitably in our future… but the treasure of sisterly love will withstand the test of time.