Celebrate your freedom

In our house, Emmie plans to spend the Fourth of July holiday celebrating her freedom from tyranny. Case in point:


Oh look, the two kids are sitting so nicely together! But that foot looks a little menacing...



Ohhhhhh shit, I better get out of the way. I am not going down like that.



Oh yeah? Here's a poke in the eye. How you like THAT, huh? HUH?



Hug it out bitches.



Aaaand we're back to sitting nicely. That was quick.

Happy Independence Day to you and yours. Hopefully you'll enjoy the long weekend, a small parade, some cold beers, a hot bratwurst and the annoying firecrackers that will go off outside your bedroom window for hours on end.

Skinned knees are fun

This is how Emmie has looked for the past few weeks:


The poor thing learned to run recently and now it's all she does. Except she thinks she's Marion Jones and not a 17-month-old who hasn't fully developed her sense of balance or the ability to watch where the hell she is going.

The nasty scab/gaping wound/MRSA-waiting-to-happen hole in her knee became a fixture on her leg last week at the park. I was not witness to this particular incident as I was dropping Jack off at camp, but Grandma said she took off running and had no sense to look where she was going and left the skin of her kneecap on the concrete. But she barely cried with that injury, thus proving my theory that having a brother beat the shit out of you for a year makes you a very tough little girl.

Things were fine until a few days later when she was playing in the basement and stumbled over one of the 54,000 toys we have down there. Right on to her knee. Which resulted in her scab being ripped off by the carpeting and blood pouring forth. That one earned her a Band-aid when she finally stopped crying. Except every time she looked down and saw the Band-aid, the crying started anew. Which was cute for a few minutes and then kinda annoying after an hour. I was like "Get over it sister. You've had worse happen. Remember when your head was slammed in the fridge? That's worthy of crying. This is nothing." Surprisingly, my buck-up speech did nothing for her outlook. Instead she crawled into my lap and laid with her head on my chest for a half-hour, sighing and burying her face every time she looked at her knee.

This past weekend she added the double-scraped shins to her repertoire when we attended a post-wedding brunch. She was having a delightful time climbing up and down the brick patio stairs. Until she slipped. And then the screaming ensued because she slipped right on the edge of the bricks, scraping both shins the entire way. Nothing is more fun at a wedding brunch than a screaming, bleeding kid! Although, what better form of birth control for a young, married couple?

I know her legs will likely look like this for years to come if she's anything like her mother and likes to play outside and run around and generally act crazy. But if we could avoid any more gaping wounds for the rest of the summer, that would be nice.

And just so he doesn't feel left out, here's a picture of Jack. He has plenty of bruises of his own to show off, but most notable would be the dark circles under his eyes. Those would be the result of yesterday's no-nap shenanigans coupled with his penchant for waking up before 6 a.m. every day.



I will spare you the pictures of my own dark circles, which are also a direct result of Jack's penchant for waking up before 6 a.m. every day. That is something no one should be subjected to.

Sweet 16

Here we are at the 16-week mark, four months officially in the books with this pregnancy. I am pleased to say I am finally not sick anymore. I have days here and there where I am still queasy, but I turned the corner in the middle of last week and felt like a fog lifted and things got a whole lot better.

This means I can now prepare food and serve it, which is nice for my family. I also don't scream, "Don't talk about it! Don't talk about it!" when someone innocently brings up an item of food in conversation. It was a rough four months, but it's behind me now.

At my next appointment with my MFM doctor, I will have the big anatomy scan. To the uninitiated, that also means it's the ultrasound where the baby hopefully opens its legs and shows the goods. With both Jack and Emmie, Josh and I were so excited to find out the sex that we begged them to look at appointments even earlier (15 weeks with Jack, 16 weeks with Emmie).

This time around, I am of the mind to have it be a surprise. I know! Those of you who know me know this is so not like me. I am a planner and a control freak and someone who likes to know everything before going into a situation. So for me to not want to find out is so out of character. But my reasoning is that we have a boy and a girl already, and wardrobes to outfit a small village of children of either sex. We have everything we could possibly need for a baby, most of it in pairs because we had two of everything when we used to split time between two houses when Jack was a baby.

But most importantly, this is my last pregnancy. My last baby. My last delivery. And it might be nice to have the moment in the delivery room when the doctor excitedly announces the sex and holds him or her up for us to see. I think I want a little surprise the third time around.

Josh, well he feels a little differently. He doesn't want to wait, he wants to find out now. His reason? He doesn't want to waste time thinking of two names. Honest to God, that is his reason.

I told him last week that I am the one who just spent three months trying not to puke my brains out. I am the one who has had five needles in my back in the last four years (it will be six once this baby is birthed). I am the one who is going to push a baby's head the size of a cantaloupe out of a hole the size of a grape. I think I get a little more say in the matter. He countered with the idea that he could find out and I could still have it be a surprise. Ah, no. Because he will tell a friend and then another friend and before you know it, I'll find out the sex of my child on Facebook.

There was an impassioned speech given this weekend and I think I might have convinced him. Anyone care to share your thoughts on finding out vs. not finding out? Anyone who has done one of each with different pregnancies?