2 Years = 24 Months!

I cannot believe this little baby of mine has turned 2! Everyone always says it but it's so true! My little baby has morphed into a walking, TALKING, song-singing big girl!

And quite the singer she is! She can sing all of Twinkle, Twinkle, Jesus Loves Me, the ABCs, Happy Birthday (although she never seems to quite get the "Happy Birthday Dear so-and-so" quite right) and the Clean up, Clean up song. I love her rendition of "Clean Up." She sings "Clean up, clean up! Everybody, every better, clean up, clean up! Everybody do your share." It totally doesn't rhyme but is so adorable.

Isla had her 2 year appointment last week. She is growing great, weighing in at 26 pounds, 6 ounces (50%) and measuring 33 inches (25-50% but closer to the 50th). Our doctor was really impressed by her vocabulary and I was so proud of her! She wasn't the least bit shy and just chatted it up with the doctor and was totally ok with the entire examination. New things to report: Isla is not color blind (hooray--this is one area we can't seem to make progress on which I was affirmed is totally normal, Isla is now transitioned to 2% milk (or "blue" milk as we call it since the milkman now delivers it in blue cartons), it is time to start using real toothpaste on Isla's teeth, we should take her in for a dental exam (as soon as we get her on our dental insurance....), she has mild eczema in her "elbow pits" which we should treat with hydrocortisone ointment and vasoline, she can now have a whole kids multivitamin (she had been getting 1/2) and it is totally normal for 2 year olds to lose their interest in potty training and therefore we should not push it (which we haven't been).

She's been able to walk up and down stairs now for a month or two. I usually prefer she go down on her belly still but she can totally walk on her own with a hand rail.

Her hair is finally long/thick enough to put in a little ponytail on top of her head. We've been having fun trying out a couple of styles (including the tiny ponytail in the back pictured below) but it is still so wild and crazy and hard to tame. We love it though. 

We got rid of our high chair almost 2 weeks ago. Initially we were just loaning it out to friends but now that we realize how much space in freed up in our kitchen and that she does fine on our chairs, I don't think we want it back. It was becoming a bit of a hazard now that she can get up in it (and then jump down!) on her own. Right now her eating thrown is atop my Gourmet cookbook on one of our pub chairs, covered by a classy white trash bag (to "protect" the already-horribly-stained white cushions). I'm thinking we might still get a booster seat as baby will need a place to eat eventually but for now I'm enjoying my "larger" kitchen!

Isla really seems to enjoy moving furniture. One of her favorite activities is to slide our kitchen chairs to various parts of the kitchen (usually right up at the counter). Sometimes she sets great traps for me as I'm frantically trying to do meal prep. She usually does this while I cook so she can watch or "help." Lately though my cooking technique is not interesting enough so she loves to go through the silverware drawer and get everything out. She also has been getting into our "junk drawer" and likes to grab the scissors, matches etc (just when you think you're done child-proofing...!!) Yesterday, she painted her legs and fingers with White Out while Daddy wasn't looking. Oops.

Isla LOVES going to the park. If you ask her what she wants to do today, she'll usually eagerly answer "Park! Swing! Slide!" Once at the park, she will literally loop up the stairs and down the slide for 30 minutes straight if you let her. She's able to play pretty independently now on the big toys which is nice.

Isla continues to love reading and playing with blocks or the wooden train at her Grandma and Grandpa Crozier's. I will often find her upstairs in her room, rocking in the rocker and "reading" to herself.



Isla is paying attention!! I been catching her repeating things played on the radio on numerous occasions and was shocked when out of nowhere she finished the "Spirit one o five -- three" radio jingle in perfect pitch. The other day I was expressing to Graham how tired I was and said something oober-draumatic like "I literally feel like I could die." Isla proceeded to repeat "Mama die! Mama die!" for the remainder of the car ride. Another oops.

Isla is a little tomato thief. She loves to sneak out back and eat as many cherry tomatoes as she possibly can before we catch her. She knows the yellow ones are the "good ones" but she'll eat them green if she can't find any that are ripe. She does the same with my strawberries. It feels wrong to scold her for eating such healthy foods but she knows she is supposed to let Mommy or Daddy help her pick as she's been known to rip off entire branches by accident.

Unfortunately Isla picked up a little attitude in the past week or so. She's known the word "No" for quite some time but now she's added some force behind it when she says it and I'm pretty sure it's her new favorite word (she's 2, what can I say?)

Isla really seems to understand that a new baby is on the way. The other day she told us "Isla go to hospital." When we asked her what for, she looked at us with this look that totally read Duh Mom and Dad! and said "New baby!!" Lately she's been talking a lot about the baby in her belly or the one that is hiding in her bib.

Pregnancy 2: 39 Weeks

I really hope this is my last pregnancy post, but I realize there is a chance I could have another week to 10 days to go (please no!!!) Today was my initial due date (by dates) so I'm hopeful. But then again, tomorrow is Isla's birthday and if we don't get the show on the road soon, the kiddos might have to share a special day.

It is seriously CRAZY to me that I could go to bed one night and then before the sun is up, have had a baby. I think about it every night before bed and I CANNOT WAIT! The anticipation is starting to officially kill me. I spend a lot of the night these days laying there awake, wondering if my water will break. It is so weird how you just expect things to go the way they did with your first. My water broke at midnight with Isla and so therefore if I wake up after midnight without sign of any action, I catch myself thinking "Well, I guess it's not happening tonight."

Which leads me to another thing. I don't really know what real, natural labor feels like. I was trying to refresh my memory and remember what the 5-1-1 rule stood for from our birthing class so I would know when to go to the hospital in case labor actually doesn't start with a middle-of-the-night-bed-wetting. Confession: I had to Google it to figure out what the last 1 stood for (contractions 5 minutes apart, lasting 1 minute in duration for at least 1 hour). Anyhow, every time I have a contraction, I think "Oh! This could be it!" I had been having a LOT of painful ones ~37 1/2 weeks but then they really died down only to pick up again yesterday.

In case you were wondering, I don't have PIH which is exactly what I expected. The extra workup they did last week was definitely overkill but better to be safe than sorry! My blood pressure was on the higher end again yesterday (130/80) but I'm pretty sure that's because I was stressed out that it might be high. The fact that the blood pressure cuff kept literally inflating itself right off my arm also led me to believe that the nurse might not have gotten the most accurate measure...

In other news, my doctor checked yesterday and I'm dilated to 2 cm, 100% effaced and he said the head is "right there." He basically told me I was so "ready down there" that he wasn't sure why I wasn't in labor at that current second. Cool beans! But he also said now we are just waiting for the baby to decide it is time. Which could still be a while. After he checked me, contractions starting picking up and I was feeling really funny and listless. I was hopeful it meant something but here I am, still pregnant.

I've been having a lot of nerve pain in my legs lately (most the right one). Not sure what the baby is bumping up against but it sends the sharpest pain down my leg that literally causes me to scream (and sometimes nearly fall over). It totally freaks Graham out every time it happens. Pregnancy is a dangerous sport, I tell ya.

Over the weekend, summer arrived in the NW and temperatures jumped above 80 for almost the first time all "summer." This did a number on my footsies, causing some major swelling action. I noticed at work on Friday that my shoes were feeling awfully tight (so much so that I was starting to limp) and then after work I put on my walking shoes only to find I had to loosen the laces so much I barely had enough left over to tie! We went to the NW WA Fair up in Lynden on Saturday and my feet looked like sausages when the day was through. They didn't return to anywhere near normal until Monday.

I have decided not to get on the scale again for the rest of the pregnancy. The number does more harm then good so I'm just going to leave well enough alone. Of course I forgot that they'd be weighing me at my appointment yesterday and I gained 4 pounds in a week!! I think I can say with full confidence though that I'm retaining water.

I guess you could say I've been nesting a bit. I am keeping the house extra clean "just in case" because it would seriously nearly kill me to have to come home from the hospital to a messy house. My freezer is also stocked with 15 cups of homemade marinara, 45 large meatballs, a braided pizza loaf, creamy chicken enchiladas, pesto ravioli, gnocchi gratin, huevos rancheros and maple-glazed salmon. Can you tell I'm wondering where I will find time to cook once I have TWO? I also have all the fixings to make BBQ Pork Chops w/ sauteed apples and Spicy Honey-Glazed Chicken thighs and was also going to whip up a double batch of my peanut sauce that can be thrown together with shrimp and green beans for dinner in a hurry. Oh and tomorrow I'm going to roast my first whole chicken! Nesting.....?

We still haven't settled on a girl name yet. And yes, the small font is intentional because I'm feeling a bit sheepish. I wasn't even going to mention it but figured I needed to have it documented for this baby's pregnancy journal. We sat down last night and listed all of our favorite names with the goal of crossing off ones that the other absolutely couldn't stand. Somehow though, it ended up being a "his" and "her" list and we sort of just crossed off all of the others' names. We will have one though, I'm choosing not to worry. We have a lot of good options. We just need to see the baby's face and figure out which one "fits."

I am getting so. tired. Like more tired than I have ever been in all my life. Yesterday I didn't think I was going to be able to stand up. Thankfully, I'd planned to walk with a friend and the accountability got me out the door and somehow miraculously walking. I really don't know how I made it through the rest of the day but somehow even managed to grocery shop and clean the house. Today I am being ridiculously lazy but my body is asking for it so I'm gladly obliging.

For all you non-pregnant folk, I'm not making this whole thing sound very glamorous now am I?

The Name Game

Much to my dismay, we are stilled undecided on a girl name for this baby. I thought we had settled on one a couple weeks ago but then I think in retrospect, I was actually just settling so that the decision could be over. The name we chose was "ok" but it didn't excite me. That's probably not a very good sign. When Graham told me on Wednesday that he was uncertain again too, I burst into tears. I'm pretty sure some phrase like "Don't alter my equilibrium!" may have escaped from my lips. But really, I'm so thankful we are reconsidering again.

We have just had so many rules:
1) it can't be too popular
2) it can't sound too much like "Isla" if yelled up the stairs (ex: Ella, a name that I just love)
3) it needs to have a good meaning or at least not mean something horrid like "born with a crooked nose"
4) it can't end in "er" because that sounds funny paired with "Crozier"
5) it needs to be unique but not crazy unique--one of us needs to have heard of someone named it before
6) it would probably be nice of us to use a family name
7) we both need to love it
8) we also need to love the nicknames that go with it
9) it should sound good paired with Isla (because we'll forever be listing our kids' names off to people)
10) it needs to be more than one syllable in length
11) it needs to be less than three syllables in length
12) guess that leaves us with only two syllable names
13) European names are nice
14) maybe we should give all our kids names that have an island or water theme
15) or maybe they should all have something to do with months of the year (Isla June)

And the list continues. As you can see, we made the whole ordeal nearly impossible. But now push is coming to shove and eventually we will need to choose something. I think I am having such a hard time partially because we have spent so much time researching (like we tend to do with vacations and other important decisions in our life) and reading and re-reading name books that nothing sounds news and fresh and exciting to me anymore. There are moments where I can't remember what I like anymore and goodness knows I can't find anything that fits our 15 rules!!! It's like I am secretly hoping that the baby is just going to come out with a name written on it in sharpie (wouldn't that be...uhhh....nice? Not.) Or that the baby will be whisked away from me for a brief time and then come back with a name. Voila!

But really, I want neither of those two options and so I've decided to throw most all the rules out the window! I gone through the list of all the names we've ever loved and have whittled it down to the ones that make me giddy. And I'm deciding not to care how unique or popular they are. Although we are still going to "wait until we see the baby" to decide on our final pick for sure, by golly, this baby is going to have a name! And I am going to just love it!

Engagement Anniversary

Today we celebrated our 5 year engagement anniversary! I realize not a lot of people remember or celebrate this kind of thing but I always remember it being on my parents' calendar growing up and so I am going with tradition and honoring ours as well. Plus Graham's proposal was pretty over-the-top-amazing so I think it is worth reminiscing. He had no idea what day it was today but I whisked him away with a trunk full of gear and told him I had a little surprise for him. Apparently he connected the dots once we hit the highway to Edmonds and figured out what was going on. This time we had Isla and baby-to-be along which I feel is so fitting--if it hadn't been for this big day 5 years ago, these 2 little people would not be a part of our lives!

I packed a lunch of the "gourmet sandwiches" mentioned below (Shrimp Sandwiches w/ Mango Salsa and Avocado Spread on Baguette)--this time I was determined we would get to eat them!

I'm re-posting an old e-mail that I wrote shortly after the proposal occurred. It's a great reenactment of that wonderful day.

"Big events just don't seem to cease with me lately....Last Thursday was a big day. Things were looking pretty serious with Graham and I but then a few days ago, he gave me this huge talk that he needed more time because he really wanted to have a place to live, have found a church etc. before he proposed. I was so bummed because he's been looking for a place for 6 months + !! Then on Thursday night we went on our weekly date. We'd spent about an hour making these gourmet sandwiches and a nice salad to take for our picnic. I put the sandwiches in the oven to keep them warm while we packed everything else. We arrived at the beach only to find I'd left them in the oven! I was so frustrated with myself and the fact that we didn't have our yummy sandwiches (figures I'd be paying attention to the food....) that I didn't even notice he was acting nervous. We were at a sandy beach overlooking the ocean with a ferry boat just coming into the dock (Edmonds). Anyway, we were busy reading something together and all of a sudden, in the middle of his sentence, he started looking up toward the sound of an airplane. Since he was in the middle of talking, I followed his eyes and looked up too. There was a nice airplane flying above us---that was all I saw. Then I realized it was one of those planes that flies with a banner behind it and I started thinking, how cool, somebody is going to get a message! Then as I started paying closer attention, I saw that the banner read "Kelsie I love you. Will you marry me?" It didn't occur to me for a brief moment that it was MY name with MY spelling on the sign! When it finally clicked, I looked at Graham and saw he was smiling and said (and I quote): 'ARE YOU SERIOUS!??' Then he asked me to marry him and gave me a beautiful ring. The whole beach began to applaud (as well as the people lining the ferry dock). I looked up to realize Lani's fiance had been hiding in the bushes taking pictures of the whole thing. Graham then ran to his car to get his guitar and some sparkling cider to celebrate. He played me a song that he wrote with the whole beach audience. When I got up afterwards to go to the ladies room, a couple women came running up to me to say congrats and to see my ring. Graham's family then appeared from the other side of the ferry where they'd been hiding. Graham said that apparently about 4 planes flew over us before the actual plane and so every time he heard a sound, his heart would pound and he would casually try and look up and see if it had a sign---I didn't even notice. :o) What a fun week! I was all smiles..."

Here we were then (at an engagement party the next day 8/18/06)

And now! (8/17/11)

Still so happy together.... :)

A thing of beauty

I may be nuts but I just find this image beautiful. There is nothing quite like the satisfaction of a totally delicious meal after an exhausting day. We are going on day 3 in a row of nap strikes which leaves me 38 weeks pregnant and absolutely tired to the core. I suppose the 10 miles I walked yesterday could also have a wee bit to do with it but I'm just plain beat!

I couldn't have picked a better day to serve this cold dinner. All the prep work was completed in the early hours, leaving my oven off during the heat of the day. The Pasta Salad with Green Beans and Pistachios in the Lemon-Thyme Vinaigrette was mentioned in a previous post and I must say I agree that it was 5 star. The lemon zest was so refreshing mixed in with the crisp-tender green beans and the crunchy pistachios. I will definitely be making this vegetarian entree again. Oh and can I just say that my Sour Cherry and Rosemary Focaccia was also well worth the effort. I've never been a huge fan of Ms Stewart but I have to give it to her on this recipe. Isla helped me make it and loved watching the mixer "jump" as it kneaded (yes, the mixer does all the kneading which I just plain adore on a week like this week). The salad is a super simple crowd pleaser that has been a frequent flyer in our house ever since Graham and I travel to Italy. Arugula and sliced pear combine with shaved parmesan and freshly ground pepper. Add a little splash of balsamic and olive oil and voila, it's done!

Oh and just as a little sidenote if you read my earlier "What's for dinner?" post, the quiche was awesome, and so was the Seared Asian Steak salad (it whipped up in a flash). The slow-simmered meat sauce was also quite tasty and nice to come home to after a long day at work and I haven't yet made the Udon Noodle dish. The garlic ribs were awful but I didn't give you the recipe for that anyhow now did I? I must have had a hunch.

Happy eating to all!

Nursing in style

Is this not the most adorable, reversible Hooter Hider you have ever seen!? My mom made it and gave it to me yesterday and I couldn't be more in love with it!! Seriously, my mom has talent!

Moral of the story

Today I learned two things:

1) Never go on a 5 mile walk right before your OB appointment.
2) Don't see anyone other than your own doctor at 38 weeks along.

I'll leave out the boring details but basically the gist of it is that I arrived at my appointment with my heart totally still pumping from my walk in the heat only to be told my blood pressure was high (it usually runs on the low side) and that there might be a trace of protein in my urine. The nurse practitioner I had to see today told me she was being super conservative and that my usual doctor is probably going to tell her she went over the top when he finds out but she sent me to have PIH (pregnancy-induced hypertension) labs drawn just to be sure I'm not heading that direction. I knew this or something like it would happen seeing someone other than my regular doctor at this gestation. Oh well. It couldn't be prevented.

The NP said I measured 38 cm (right on) and she touched my belly and said she estimated the fetal weight to be 7 pounds right now (how she can tell from a brief touch is beyond me!) As soon as she heard the heart beat, she blurted out "You're having a boy, right?" I laughed and told her that actually we didn't know but that the heart rate had been running on the lower end at my last few appointments (it was 136 at this one) and I knew about the wives tale that low = boy. She proceeded to call the baby "he" and "him" throughout the remainder of the appointment. She checked and I was only dilated to 1 cm but that the head was right there (this I already knew!!) and she said it looks like they'd see me next week. I optimistically asked "At the hospital?" and she responded "No, here in the office." Darn!

So, I closed out the evening with a 2nd walk, this time only 4 miles. And now I don't think I'll ever get up again. :)