Big Girl Bed...

Sleep in these parts has been hard to come by these days. Rhea has been struggling for awhile now with falling asleep and we had tried everything short of turning a crib upside down on top of her to keep her contained. Though I have to admit when Bert suggested it one particularly difficult night at around 11:45 it almost seemed like a good idea. Almost.

We finally went with the hard line....after the bedtime routine then it is in bed. If she comes out it is no talking headed straight back to bed time. Over and over until she gets that she really has no other choice. A mind numbing and frustrating experience if you let yourself think about it too much.

This past weekend we decided it was time to hype up the "big girl bed" and the "big girl room" and take the plunge and move her from our room into her own. She was so excited about us setting up her bed and her "silk" above the bed. As you can see in this picture she had to set her baby bed up beside her with a silk for her baby as well. She just kills me with the cuteness.


So just about a week into this new experiment and I would have to say it is a success. She still struggles a bit to fall asleep but nothing like the epic bedtime sagas of old. The first night she came into our room several times and needed help getting back to sleep..but then we had three nights where she slept all the way through the night! One morning she crawled into bed with me and told me that she looked out the window and saw the sun so she knew it was okay to get up.

It is so strange to have our room back to ourselves (well for a month at least). Those first couple of nights the room felt strange and empty and Rhea just too far away. Bert and I both had to check on her several times to convince ourselves she was going to be fine. But I am now finding that I really love having that space back. Without having to whisper and creep around before we fall asleep, Bert and I will stay up chatting away until way past our bedtime without even realizing it. It's like we have found a way to get a little bit of "alone" time just when we need it most.

There really is a baby coming...

Preparing for baby number 2 is oh so different...there is precious little obsessing about each and every change in my body (cripes I was still recovering from Rhea when I got pregnant again...and none of you need to remind me that it was just about TWO YEARS later). There is actually very little fanfare about the whole thing in general.

Sometimes I feel like I am in this pregnancy alone. With Rhea, Bert and I were constantly talking about "the baby" and wondering about "the baby" and hoping good thoughts for "the baby" and I was basically being waited on with all the sweetness of Bert's being. Lots of cut up fruit, glasses of water with straws and ice, spontaneous gifts of overpriced but delicious massage oil etc, etc, etc. Well this time around...not so much.

I know this is understandable given that on December 3rd 2006, the focus of our family shifted from being exclusively about the two of us, to being almost exclusively about Rhea. So now the way Bert shows the sweetness of his entire being is by picking up the slack with Rhea when I am feeling particularly tired, or managing the bedtime routine solo and basically just trying to take care of her as much as he can. But it does get lonely out here in pregnancy land...

But little Rhea, in her sweet two and a half year old way, has joined me on this journey in a way that I have realized I should take the time to appreciate more. She is so very excited about her "baby Stashu" and loves to give my tummy kisses and "squeezes". She is very concerned that Stashu has enough pacifiers and sippy cups (we actually had to go on a pacifier run the other day...nevermind that Rhea never used a pacifier as a baby), and the right car seat, and continuously asks about what he might look like when he comes out.

We have been talking a lot about birth so that I can prepare her for what she can expect and it amazes me how much she retains and how much she really seems to understand what is going on. Our midwives lent us this amazing book called Hello Baby and Rhea loves to read it over and over again. She delights in my giant belly and does her best to keep her elbows, knees and feet from too much rough contact. She has started to shift her behavior from pretending to be a baby (as she did early in my pregancy) to pretending to be a Mama and she is so tender and nurturing with her baby dolls that it always warms my heart and makes me feel that I must have done something right with her.

Here is a picture of her during a recent home visit with our Midwife Nancy. While Nancy was listening to my belly for baby Stashu's heartbeat, Rhea was doing this...


I honestly could not love her more than I do right now...but I think that all of the time and all of the time I feel my love stretched and my appreciation for who she is grow.

When we were interviewing midwives one said something that has stuck in my head. She said that second babies tend to enter the world in a much calmer way and with a much calmer disposition. She attributed this to the fact that less of a fuss was made of them from the moment of conception through birth and beyond. I have held onto that little nugget of knowledge whenever I start to feel guilty about things such as finding my ultrasound pictures on the floor of the car, or forgetting which week of pregnancy I am in, or realizing that I can't remember the last time I took a prenatal vitamin. Inevitably there are times when the panic starts to creep in and I think "how are we going to manage two children and what the heck were we thinking with this whole idea anyway and when am I ever going to get some semblance of my body back to myself and poor Rhea how is she going to adjust?????"

So during these times I think of Rhea and remember that we are actually giving her quite a gift with this new sibling. I think of how this pregnancy alone has already positively impacted her life and know that even with all the transitions and adjustments and compromises that are sure to come, there will also be moments of joy and sharing of love and understanding and downright bliss. I know that Rhea will have someone to share her childhood with, to remember the same things (though maybe in different ways), to laugh with, to cry with, to roll her eyes at across the dining room table when her Mama or Papa are on some kind of surely embarrassing tirade about something. These next couple of years may be challenging but I know they will be worth it not only in the end...but throughout the journey as well.

So bring it on baby Stashu...we are waiting for you and I'm thinking we will be ready.

Rhea and Annie....

It's funny after my last post in which I mentioned Rhea's ever evolving relationship with her friend Annie, I thought it quite timely when later that day I opened my inbox to the two pictures I am about to share.

I vividly remember when this first picture was taken just about two years ago, sitting on Mary's back deck enjoying the sunshine and marveling at how big the girls had gotten. Talking about how well they "played" together and how lucky we were to have each other. You can see my hand in the bottom right corner of the pool ready to quickly intervene in the case of toppling babies or the inevitable non-intentional, yet highly frustrating, toy grabbing from each other.


And this from last week:


I mean honestly. Would you look at these two...they just barely fit in the pool! Play dates these days are really chock full of action. Our girls have more fun together than you can imagine but they also scrap like sisters and sometimes will intentionally do things just to get a reaction out of the other (this behavior is fairly even on either side...I swear they trade off irritating each other). I actually heard myself telling one of them to "just ignore" what the other was doing the other day. A piece of advice I heard countless times from my own mother as a child. A piece of advice, I should mention, that I was NEVER able to take...so I'm not sure what I was hoping to accomplish. My guess is I was looking for some relief from the whining for my own ears. It made me laugh though as it just flowed right out of my mouth as natural as can be.

But for all their scrapping they are really sweet to each other as well. Rhea loves to recount stories of their time together (if you get the chance ask her about the time they took the bus home from the bakery). Randomly Rhea will ask to go to Annie's house or out of the blue declare "I love Annie". Though perhaps what sums up their friendship the best is when we are driving away from Annie's house after a fun filled day, Rhea will almost always exclaim "It is so nice to be with my friend!".