It's been raining for almost 2 weeks now. It's hard to keep a super active 2.5 year old occupied indoors without going mildly insane. He rides his bike indoors. He does crafts. He plays computer games. He watches videos. We read to him. What he really needs is to go to the playground! He has a Batman rain suit which allows some puddle jumping as soon as the rain lightens to a drizzle. It's just that neither I, nor Mr. Cobra, have the same quality of rain gear to match. I just got a maternity coat that keeps me dry, but is far from waterproof. My belly peeks out of the front of it already. I don't even have an umbrella (that I can find). Mr. Cobra has more appropriate rain gear, but still not good enough to chase a puddle jumper through a downpour!
Aside from the rain keeping him cooped up, Dexter is cute and charming most of the time. His tantrums are changing and we can reason with him a little more. He just went through a growth spurt. I swear we can practically watch him grow sometimes! One day his pants will be just the right length and the next they are too short. Hindsight is always 20/20 when he's had a growth spurt. It goes something like this - worst tantrums ever for a while, worst sleep for us, eat more than his parents put together, sleep wonderfully, surprise us with some new cognitive skill, clothes no longer fit as well, back to sometimes average sleep and early morning rising routine. Total time is generally a couple weeks.
New things he can do - climb onto and over almost anything in the house, starting to catch onto phonetics with what letters start what words, play simple computer games (by myself!), ride his bike like a champ, making jokes, singing songs and modifying lyrics of known songs ("We all live in a yellow submarine" becomes "We all live in a purple toenail"), and carrying on full conversations even if they jump from topic to topic. He's taken an interest in potty training again. I'm not holding my breath that I won't be changing 2 kids' diapers come April though.
He's also starting to have fears. This morning, he woke up around 5:30am terrified of the heater vent in his room. We eventually got him to "fix" the vent so that it wouldn't make scary noises any more, but no one went back to bed. I hope it worked because I really can't deal with such creative problem-solving tasks when I'm half asleep.
I went to the doctor today and "Z" is doing just fine. Her heart is beating strongly and she's kicking and rolling around getting ready to fend off her older brother. I'm measuring spot on for my week of gestation and my blood pressure is actually lower than normal which is really good.
I took the glucose challenge test a few weeks ago and failed the one hour. I went back for the three hour test and failed one of the three tests. That counts as a pass, but I'm monitoring my blood sugar to make sure there aren't any issues that arise as the pregnancy progresses since sugar levels tend to rise the farther along I get. It's a bit of a pain, but whatever it takes to keep her healthy. I have to write down everything I eat with an estimate of how many carbs it contains. I have set ranges of how many carbs I should be taking in for every meal. I have to prick my finger to test my glucose levels 4 times a day - first thing in the morning and one hour after every meal. I'm pretty much borderline early in the day when the pregnancy hormone levels are highest. I've had a couple high readings, but nothing consistently over the limit. I'm modifying my diet in hopes that I can avoid insulin this time.
All in all, everything is humming along. I'm starting to get the baby stuff together and organized. We bought another carseat since we gave our last one away. I have new pink stuff for her to wear and traded bags of boy clothes for girl clothes with a friend who has a girl Dexter's age and a 5 month old son. Next on my list is organizing closet space.
Yep this was a boring post. I'm surprised you made it to the end. As a treat, here is a funny bit. Mike and I were checking out a website we're about to launch that has a lot of video and a funny talking donut. Dexter requested the "scary" website which is known to us as the Cobra Creative site. We put it on and Dex got so terrified he was screaming with tears streaming down his face "Shut it off! Shut it off!" So that's what he thinks of our company website.
