20 Weeks

Well folks, we're halfway there!  20 weeks down, 20 to go.  I have heard of women who just love being pregnant, but I can't say that I'm one of them (I have to admit I have questioned the sanity of such women at various times over the last 5 months).  I'm fairly certain we will never need a wide angle lense just to fit all of our children into a photo . . . )  To celebrate the fact that I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, here's a look back at how things have gone so far--just for "fun"!

Well, it all started with the Morning Sickness-puking morning afternoon, and night.  Just yesterday I was in the bathroom getting ready and Maya wandered in and leaned over the toilet and started making a puking sound--- if that gives you any idea of how often it was happening for a while.  I'm still taking medicine to keep things under control, but I am sooooo excited that I don't feel nauseous all the time anymore.  During the worst of it, I experienced a major change in my appetite and could hardly make myself eat anything--I didn't eat chocolate or drink diet coke for weeks, if you can believe that!  Next in line was constipation.  Not much to really say about that, other than, things got more than a little backed up.  Next up in the lineup of pregnancy moments to treasure--Restless Leg Syndrome.  This one has gotten worse lately--almost as if it's taken up the rallying cry of the Morning Sickness.  When I try to rest, my legs twitch and spasm to the point that I can't even stand to lay down and usually give up and get up (although I was reading yesterday about what you can do for RLS and one tip was to put a bar of soap under your sheet?!  Huh?).  I think the twitching legs have led to the next gem of being with child-extreme fatigue.  Between that, and the unmedicated Narcolepsy (which makes me have pretty interrupted sleep anyway), I just seem to feel tired all the time.  I keep reading that in the second trimester you should see a surge in your energy.  Liars, liars, pants on fire(s).  While we're on the topic of pain, I occasionally have a painful pinching in my low low back that shoots pain down my right leg as well and makes me groan out loud.  Much less significant, but still annoying are swollen fingers (I had to stop wearing my wedding ring at least a month ago--maybe that's not swollen fingers, maybe that's just fat fingers!), growing pains, and the fact that Mosquitos now consider me their very own all-you-can-eat-buffet (no screens on widows here).  How do women do this over and over?  I mean really.  The good news is, we're halfway there and the very worst (the morning sickness) has backed off enough for me to behave like a semi-human being!  I even cooked a big breakfast for our team the other day, including Cinnabon-clone cinnamon rolls (thanks to my amazing bread machine my hubby got me for mother's day)!  I am so thankful that God has given us the children that he has, and I'm sure as soon as I meet this little man, I will say it was all worth it. . .  until he becomes a teething toddler--but that's another post altogether!

New Adventures in May

 Maya really enjoys helping me bake.

 She tries to taste everything so she's had some funny surprises tasting things like salt and flour.

This is as close to the outdoors as we get around here, and our gardening capacity is pretty limited, but we do what we can to let Maya experience growing living things.

Maya insisted on being in control of the trowel, so the whole balcony got a dusting of dirt, but she had fun (until the clean-up bath happened, and then the fun ended very quickly).

 

Grammie sent this cute Easter card that came with a page of stickers.  She had never used stickers before and she had fun, but couldn't quite get the hang of how to get the stickers off of her fingers, onto the page.

This activity is called water painting.  My friend Laura's mom is a child education specialist, and Laura has all kinds of good ideas from helping her mom--including this one.  (I think she actually remembered this one from when she was a kid)  It's way less messy than actual paints, and Maya loved it.  Laura wanted to point out that we were painting with water, right beside the electrical outlet!  Safety here is defined a little differently . . .

Water painting soon became water playing.

 

The wetter she got, the happier she got (and it was not really very warm out at the time).

The water dish (once completely dumped on the ground and on herself) made a great hat too. . .

I am trying to learn to do more planned activities (like the planting and the painting) with Maya to keep from losing my mind with the monotonity and sometimes tedium of parenting a toddler.  She's been sick a lot lately too, so we've really needed some activities to distract us from feeling icky.

What's in a Word?

Less than a month ago, I was starting to worry about Maya's language development.  She was still barely speaking, and I was concerned that the two-language environment might be kind of skitzing out her poor little noggin'.  I had heard or read somewhere that kids who learn two language at once hit their language milestones more slowly.  On April 22nd I made a list of all of the words that she could say:

1. mama
2. dada
3. Laura (a friend's name)
4. shoes
5. no
6. baby
7. amen
8. ooooh
9. night-night

Now, less than a month later, she's got all of these new words:

1. toes
2. bird
3. book
4. please
5. peas
6. cheese
7. banana
8. Hannah (A friend's name)
9. stroller
10. water
11. Isla (Another friend's name)
12. stairs
13. row (as in row, row, row your boat--her favorite song)
14. nose
15. yah
16. bow

Plus all the words I'm sure I'm forgetting, or can't understand. . . Silly me, I was worried about her not speaking much--hah!  Now she's repeating all kinds of words that we say to her.  The day before yesterday, she said her first Arabic word--woo hoo!  She said, "tai" which means, "come", then today I'm pretty sure she added water ("mai") and let's go ("yalla") to her vocabulary.  Now that I've stopped worrying about her ability to speak, anybody know what to do about her being pigeon-toed and dragging her feet when she walks? :) 

A Break From the City

The weekend before last we got a break from the city and headed down South to visit some friends.  We had a great time taking in the beauty of creation, enjoying our friends, and generally having a good time.

 We celebrated this cutie's birthday (and isn't the puppy cake adorable?--what a talented mama she has!).

 These two had all kinds of fun together.

They have some pretty humorous personality differnces that are already showing up--I took these two pics at the end of our two day visit, and I think somebody was ready to have her space and toys and orderly little life back.  Numerous times throughout the weekend, she would look at something Maya had done and call out, "Mess!"  Too funny!

Maya being a bit oblivious to the stress she was causing her buddy. . .

 And this is the baby sister, who I just couldn't resist taking a million pictures of--isn't she a beautiful baby!?

 We had to kind of re-discover grass--she was so funny stomping around in it.

 We went for a little walk to explore the area.

 Maya is crazy for chickens right now, so seeing some real live ones was a real delight.

 She's getting really good at her chicken sound--you should hear it.

 The owner of the chickens discovered us outside and was delighted to show Maya her little bunch of baby chicks!

 This is new--instead of me having to steal all of my kisses from Maya, (at which point she would yell, jerk away and sometimes swat the air), I ask her for a kiss--and sometimes she actually obliges me and GIVES me a kiss--precious!!!

 I just put this one in here because I think she's too cute!

We were all sad to see the weekend end! 

Great Mom Quote

My friend over at B in Real Life posted this last Mother's Day and she included this quote that is SO good, I had to re-post it here. 

“It is not difficult to see why … the female became the emblem of the universe. Nature, surrounded her with very young children, who require being taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment … is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. … How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No. A woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.” GK Chesterton

Isn't that good stuff?  I love reading B's blog--she has two babies!  She keeps it real and makes me laugh a lot.  Check her out!

My Mama

This is my beautiful Mama.  I love her so much.  Now that I'm a mom, I love her even more.  I love her for all of the late nights, the bedside nursing, the diaper changing, the thankless tasks, the endless meals, endless dishes and endless discipline.  I cannot say enough how much she means to me.  She taught me just about everything I know.  She taught me about beauty and how to find it in ordinary places.  She taught me the value of making things beautiful and making a home where people feel welcome and safe.  She taught me how to love Jesus and serve others.  She taught me about being not only a good mom, but a good wife.

If we lived in the same country, I would always want to live down the road from her.  She's not merely my mom, she's my friend.  She's the one I ask when I don't know how to cook something or how I should decorate something on a budget.  She can still shop for me and get my taste and size right.  

Maya has recently learned to say Mama, and there is something very special about her calling out to me, "Mama, Mama!"  Something very special about a mom and her girl.  Happy Mother's Day, I love you mom.