What's your parenting style?

Not too long ago, I took a 5 question quiz (I think it was off of facebook) that was supposed to tell me my parenting style. My friend Trisha (currently T-2 weeks from her own due date), took it as well, she was the one that sent it to me. I answered honestly from what I think I would do. The questions were as inane as what would you take as a snack for your kids' soccer team, and none of the answers was I happy with, but I chose as close to what I would do as possible. The results? Well I was glad to know we got the same results, because I think that she will be a fun, responsible parent. But the quiz told both of us that we'd be awful mothers that would be mean to our kids. Umm, what?

But I went to parenting.com today and found another quiz. Based on your personality style. Mine may have shifted a bit over the last few years, I'm probably a bit more relaxed and laid back, but I went off of my old style INTJ. I'm sure you all have taken this type of test before, but if you haven't, no fear, all the initials are there for you to pick from (are you an introvert or extrovert, for example)... and here's what mine says. I'm happy with it. It also offers a one line tip as a kind of 'get with it' for your own style. Go and find your own.

The individual-integrity mother (INTJ)This mom is introspective, defining her own success from within, and is generally confident in her decisions. She's unlikely to be persuaded by her kids' saying "But all the other moms are doing it." She's competent in providing for her kids' basic needs, but she's likely more focused on building their confidence. She puts great importance on independent thinking and self-sufficiency. This mom works hard and takes life seriously; she lives for those moments when she can impart knowledge and offer her kids new perspectives on life. Stay-sane tip: It's essential for you to have a project to call your own. If you don't have a job, try volunteering to meet your need for mental stimulation and adult conversation.

Does wounded animal mean anything to you?...

You know that surprised, awful yelping that animals make when they're wounded and need help? Yeah, I made that last night. Woke my husband up from a dead sleep. Apparently I'd tried to get out of bed without rolling, thereby yanking my hip socket from top to bottom and momentarily causing myself an inordinate amount of pain. After laying still for a couple of minutes I was able to roll out of bed to use the bathroom. I think my body felt sorry for me after that, because that was one of only about 2 or 3 times I had to get up total last night. Talk about awesome.

I apologized to my husband for waking him up. He said? When did you wake me up? Oh really? Okay.

Guess that crying baby isn't going to disturb him too much, now is it?

Bad dreams...

I keep telling myself, it's only a dream. A bad, bad dream, but nonetheless, a dream. I was prepared for vivid dreams, I was prepared for 'something happened to the baby' dreams--which I've had a couple of. I was even prepared for wild, trashy dreams like other women seem to have when they are pregnant. Do I have those? No. Of course not.

I have dreams that my smoke-allergic, very occasional drinker husband, is not only smoking (while I am trapped in the vehicle with him), but trashed out of his mind, driving, mind you, and talking about illicit drug-ridden countries and people that come from them like they're his best friends. The worst part was the fact that it didn't seem like he even cared. Not about me, not about the baby, not about the fact that we were both trapped there with him, but not about himself either.

Of course this is totally wrong, improbable and impossible, but still, it left me shaken up as I woke up and tried to get it out of my head. I'm still a little freaked out, although taking a few minutes to hold him and hear his heartbeat and just be in his presence helped a little bit, and feeling the baby move inside me, safe and sound was reassuring, it still gives me the heebie jeebies. Shudder.

What dreams have you had?

Kick Counts..

We're starting to do kick counts. I did them this morning after taking my iron pill, drinking juice and eating fruit. I got the 10 counts in under 5 minutes.

After a dinner of lasagna and with 'dad' helping out, we took 45 minutes to get to 10. Not sure what the difference was. Usually with 'dad' talking or singing or doing whatever, baby goes nuts. Not today, at least not for a sustained amount of time anyway.

Still, though, we got it, so that's good.

We had plenty right before lunch, when I was getting ready to run to the store (the only thing I forgot yesterday was parmesan cheese to put in the lasagna)...and the belly was ROLLING. Seriously. We'd been seeing poke outs but not the rolls. So it was hilarious. I sat there for a while just watching. I figured we'd have a couple more weeks before we were able to see that. But tonight, being stubborn I guess.

We have a football fan...

Either that or the baby is starting to startle with loud noises. With cheering/clapping at the football game, we got a HUGE reaction. Also with me saying 'baaaabbbyyy' fairly loudly we got a few big wiggles and tonight Matthew was just talking to the baby and the silly thing was just a flipping out like crazy. Guess it likes daddy's voice, a lot. It's a little painful sometimes when reacting to things like that because I get poked in about 4 places at once. But it's fun nonetheless.

no news...

At all.. which I THINK is good news. I figured I would hear by 5 pm and now it's past that, so I think I'm okay, no diabetes = very happy mamma. I'm still going to watch what I eat, but at least I won't be paranoid about every 'sugary' bite now.

Thanks for all the comments.

Lil Mouse (with the swollen belly)...

Pray for no news...

The baby is doing well, Mommy, however is doing less well. Apparently the baby is taking a bigger toll on me than I thought. My blood pressure is a little bit high (I normally have LOW bp), my iron is low (I think my meat and potatoes ancestors are rolling over in their graves), and I'm scared to bits that I'll end up with gestational diabetes. Mostly because there is diabetes in my family --my husband says its not fair to say there's diabetes in his family because it's Type II, whatever. So is it on my side, but I still report it anyway, diabetes is diabetes. Anyway, the point is that if you have gestational diabetes you have 50% more chance of getting it later in life. Wonderful. Yes, candy is my weakness. Occasionally I overindulge, but for the most part, I turn down dessert and I watch what I eat. About the iron issue: My vitamins have 100% of my daily value of iron in them, and the cereal I've been eating has 45%, plus I eat plenty of meat and such (less red meat lately), but I still have to take an iron tablet each day now :-( I'm not too happy about that. Especially since I can't take it at the same time as my other vitamin or it will just flush out. And of course the one thing you can't have it with is dairy products, which I do typically eat three times a day. Sometimes I also have ice cream later in the evening. So what's a girl to do? Right now I take my multivitamin in the evening right before bed. So I guess I'm going to have my cereal with milk early AM, then wait a couple of hours and take the iron with OJ-as citrus seems to help it absorb apparently, then have lunch a couple of hours later. Then hopefully it wont have anything to block it from absorbing. Then I can continue to take my multivitamin in the evening. As for the diabetes, the tolerance test or screening or whatever, if I don't hear anything today then I'm home free. If they call, I'm screwed. Fabulous. I wish they'd call either way, but that's not the way it works. Talk about praying for the phone NOT to ring, no really, please pray for the phone not to ring...

Oh the baby's 'shelter' is 28 cm (I'm at 27.5 wks, so perfect), heart rate is 154, and WE together have only gained 3 3/4 pounds this month. YEAH!!!!!! We kept it within the limits this time. Very exciting. So my 'net' gain is still only 5 3/4 lbs. Happy Dance!

Pink or Blue?

He he. For registering to deliver at the hospital here, we got a coupon for a free Halo Sleep sack. Cool, huh? We ended up over at my dr's appt. early, so we went into the hospital gift shop and picked one up. Or so I thought. I ended up picking up something new with swaddles on it, and the coupon didn't cover that. So we put it back and the elderly lady behind the counter asked us 'pink or blue' --- and I said, we don't know yet. Boy was she confused. It wasn't until Matthew explained that I really didn't answer her question accurately that I got why she was so confused. Of course I did say, well since we don't know we should probably go with blue. And you know, she tried to argue with us and have us come back after the baby was born. You know, the whole point is that you get a freebie just for registering, why should you have to come BACK AFTER the baby is born, when you could go ahead and get it and get it washed and all ready for the baby? What if you forget about it while you're at the hospital and don't make it back before the baby would outgrow it? So I turned to Matthew and said, well what do you think, and he said, well I guess we should go ahead and get blue now so we have something...thereby we have a new Halo sleep sack. Yeah.

Glucose, scary Glucose..

Well this afternoon I have to go get my sugar levels tested. I am FREAKING out about this. My dad has diabetes, my mom's mom had it and of course it runs in both our families. I haven't exactly been a saint in the last week about sugar, although I should have known better. I know it shouldn't really matter and that if I were to attempt to fool the test then I'd be in even more trouble than should I go in normally. However, I didn't drink a regular soda yesterday as I had been doing and when I made cookies this weekend, I ate a couple and sent Matthew to work with the rest. He didn't even get any because everyone else there ate them. Ooops. Anyway, the candy jar is sealed tight and I had fruit and cereal for breakfast (versus orange juice, which DOES have a lot of sugar in it) and I plan on trying to have a decent lunch, unfortunately, my appointment is at 3 pm. I would have much prefered an earlier appointment. However, my hubby has decided that it will be too nice of a day to stay at work and so he's going with me. Yeah! No hour of complete solitary boredom staring at the doctor's office walls while I wait to see if I am going to have GD or not. The honest truth is, I have enough to worry about right now without having to watch even closer what I eat. I already have to be super careful about how much weight I gain. I was allowing myself the few extra calories a day by having some ice cream at night, but when my weight went up to 5 pounds instead of 4 gained for the month, I stopped that. It doesn't really seem fair. I don't even really feel like I'm eating for ONE let alone TWO. Oh well, I know that the truth is you're only supposed to get a few extra calories a day (300), but still. I'm just hoping for a good outcome. I still won't be able to have ice cream every night, but at least I won't be forced into refusing cake at my baby showers...

What's that movement....?

It's time for everyone's favorite new game show 'WHAT'S THAT MOVEMENT!!!!' starring your guest little meece of course. Gender and stereotypes aside, this little mouse has been entertaining the big meeces with 'what's that movement' for quite some time. We started out with gentle flutters, then progressively got more interesting with kicks to the bladder and double and triple pokes, then pokes on both sides of the belly at once.

The last 2 weeks have been particularly interesting, with an odd grinding feeling coming from underneath mama mouse's rib cage. What could that POSSIBLY be? Hiccups?

Daddy mouse to the rescue, he puts his hand on mama mouse's belly and after feeling the grinding movement for himself, he pulls his hand back and with an odd look on his face stammers....I .. I think that was a shoulder.. but... it went like THIS... and draws an odd zig zag pattern on mama mouse's arm. Yes for once we're feeling an honest to goodness turn or flop from the mini-mouse, completely with full body contact. May also be likened to a horse rubbing its' butt on a fence post to scratch and itch it can't reach any other way, or rolling on the ground to do the same.

Stay tuned for next week's edition of 'What's that movement' starring everyone's favorite fetus, little meece!

Well...

While not sleeping yesterday morning, I thought to myself, if I had 2 kids a boy and a girl their names would be what? I came up with an answer off the top of my head.

So I asked my hubby the same thing, while we were taking the new stroller and such upstairs. Guess what? He came up with the same answer.

We decided to leave the other names up on the nursery wall though, just in case we changed our minds, and just to think about it for a while.

But the names we decided on were...

You didn't really think I was going to tell did you? Ha! But here's a nice picture of our new stroller and car seat combo thingy. Black with just a hint of green trim. Probably about as perfectly neutral as you can get.

Stuff being bought for me/us...

Okay so because of THIS, you know I have slight issues with things just 'being bought' for us (being anyone who lives in my body or my household, ya know?). But, much to a lot of my reader's good advice, when the below package arrived by UPS today, I bit my tongue and waited for the culprit to admit what had happened. Which happened very shortly afterwards. My MIL is at it again. And I said, so it WAS you? And she said yes. And I said, well I would tell you it's too much, but you already know that, so instead, I will just say thank you. My tongue is in 2 pieces, but... what can I say? My hubby knew my objections and was in on it. So what am I going to do? Nothing, I'm going to be grateful. There are other more important things going on. See my other blog for the latest. Oh yes, if you can't tell, that's a stroller AND a carseat. Good Lord...

How to name your child...

Well here's a helpful hint for those non-parents, if there are any and read this...
Baby name books don't really help you CHOOSE a name, they help you eliminate names, and thereby I suppose eventually help you choose a name. I went to the library and picked up 2 books. The one that was helpful in a sort of way was "beyond Jennifer & Jason Madison & Montana" -- It's a few years old and the most helpful thing about it was somewhere near the end of the book one particular tip. It was:

Consider that you may have more than one child and whatever you name your first child, you will not be able to use on subsequent children. Same thing with naming your second or third, if you want them to all go together, try not to make them all matchy-matchy (like a family we knew was Jeanna, Nina, and Serena- oh and their middle names rhymed too) or all starting with the letter J (Jason, Jaime, Jenna, Jake) or that sort of thing.

That advice was actually helpful to me as we kept talking about it more and more, if we use one particular name, then we wouldnt be able to use another, as some of the names we have picked out may cross over with middle and first names, and that's just silly. The example they gave was having a girl named Roberta and calling her Bobbi and then having a boy and naming him Robert and calling HIM Bobby. See what I mean? That had really never crossed my mind before.

One thing we did (forgive if I've said this) is to take the names we are considering and print them out in a nice, bright color (like orange) --big enough to be seen across the room-- and tape them to the nursery wall. Then go in at the beginning or end of the day and just look at them. See how they 'look' to you.

One other piece of advice is to 'introduce yourself as your kid' when you go out somewhere. Which I think is stupid. Then people aren't going to know your real name. What WE found was more interesting and useful, was saying, to each other of course, Hi I'm "Tyler's" mom [not a name we are considering, that's my nephew's name]-- and seeing how it feels in your mouth. Or try, this is my daughter "Felice" [again total hogwash]...

Really, though, don't go out and buy a baby name book for $12 (the price of the only one we found in a store)-- go to your library and check one out and use it for ideas, or to dwindle your names down. That's what we have done and so far we're down to 10 combos of names. Not too bad, considering. Oh and be aware, there were at least 20 baby name books on the shelves. Good luck trying to pick one. :-)

Cravings?...

So when are the cravings supposed to kick in? Because I haven't had any out of usual cravings at all. Except maybe for sleep. Sure, there are things now and then that sound good, but not anything that would be out of the ordinary or I haven't, you know, sent the hubby on a midnight run for anything or whatnot. Maybe that's all just televised junk? Did you have cravings? Send your hubby on a midnight taco run or anything? Just wondering. I'm feeling kind of left out here.

I can't see...

Out of my left eye. Thanks to 'thumper' or 'pinky' or whatever we're calling the baby these days. Really it's 'the baby' or 'hey you quit that'--or 'what you want hon?' when I'm being kicked to pieces.

I digress. So I may need a pair of glasses to 'carry me over' during the next 3 months and up to 6 months afterwards. It all depends on if we want to spend the money (could get them for as little as $25) or not. It would be nice not to have blurry vision because all the fluid in my eyes is pressing on my astigmatism.

Did I blog about this on my other blog? I don't know. What I do know is that it was hysterical (and by that I mean I almost had to excuse myself from the exam room because I was dissolving into giggles) because the whole middle of the row looked like DOTS, so I was saying K, dot, dot, Z. That's it. And laughing SO HARD. It really wasn't funny, but then again it was. Because I KNOW they were supposed to be letters, but obviously couldn't see them. AT ALL.

Olympic Torch lighting...

We watched the Olympic Torch lighting last night as a 'family' --Matthew got to feel the baby kicking (it's gotten a lot more thumpy and bumpy with harder kicks lately) and of course was thrilled with the big bumps.

It was a nice bonding moment, just the three of us, as a family watching history being made. Kind of nice.

Where did my bellybutton go? and more tales from pregnancy...

Except when I'm sitting down, I can't see my bellybutton anymore. It seems to have gotten tinier (if that's possible, it was pretty small to begin with) the bigger my belly has gotten, and if I'm leaning to one side, it almost looks herniated or swollen on one side or the other. Poor belly button. I'm hoping that's not a sign that it's going to pop like a Thanksgiving turkey. We will see, I guess.

For the last couple of months, I have rhino boobs. Armadillo, something. By that I mean I would swear that they're plated with extra tough skin. Some of this is relieved by lotion, some not. They also poking out like the proverbial temperature gauges, even though it's warm out. And huge, why didn't anyone say they'd be so huge? One of my friends warned me about 'leaks' - that only started a few weeks ago, and usually it's only at night or early in the morning, it's only one of them, and if I've gotten up to use the bathroom or something and it's taking a while if you know what I mean. Guess my body is preparing for those 1 am feedings. I think my hubby was freaked out at first, I know the first couple of times I was like, what the? because I dont usually wear much to bed, so all of the sudden, my leg would be wet. Then one night I was wearing a shirt and it dawned on me what it was. Now, as with most things, my hubby seems to okay with it. Usually, it doesn't affect him anyway. He's sound asleep.

Lucky punk.

Crib Mattress...

Now that we have the crib in (notice not put together), we went ahead and went out and got a crib mattress. While we were at Target we saw a cute 12 mo onesie in BRIGHT ORANGE. Yeah couldnt pass that one up, especially since it was a grand total of 98 cents! Woohoo. Now that's the kind of prices I love. Being well schooled now in the 'it doesnt matter what the months on there say' (well then why don't they make them go by pounds then) I decided for a buck and with such a cute thing, we had to have it.

Then we went and got ice cream. From Dairy Queen. Yikes. We hadn't done that in quite a while. I had a small peanut butter cup blizzard (my husband finally decided for me as I couldnt face that kind of decision at 9pm) and my husband had a large butterfinger blizzard. Wow. More than $10 for the 2 items. Crazy stuff, man. I ate the whole small container, which I dont know was probably 8 oz. I think the baby liked it. I know I was happy as a little clam. Even happier that when I got on the scale this morning, I'm only weighing a pound over my absolute heaviest, which means I didn't gain 5 lbs overnight from eating ice cream, which was my fear.

Anyway, we're one step closer to having a nursery ready by November. In a few weeks, 2 baby showers are being thrown for me in the same weekend, 4 hours away. This will be a challenge. Just riding in a vehicle that long with the status of my bladder? Is going to be a challenge. We plan to wake up on Saturday morning and head that way for a p.m. shower, then we'll have church the next morning and a p.m. shower at church and then should be a relaxing evening before heading to Matthew's orthodontist appointment at 8 am on Monday, then back home. At least I won't have to work the next day.

That was fast...

We picked up the crib last night. We'll see if we can get it put together this weekend or not. I'm really glad it's Friday but cranky because I've been up (again) for the last 2 hours. What's up with the interrupted sleep?