Cream of Potato Soup

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So here's a hint for all you folks out there. When you go through months of fertility testing and the doctors tell you that you can't get pregnant without some serious medical intervention, they may not know what they're talking about. Because after two years of trying and hearing it would never happen, Mike and I got the shock of our lives about two months ago.

Yes, dear readers, the adventure begins again. I'm pregnant, due June 13, 2006.

Let me tell you what a bit of news that was. We were finally used to the idea that it would be just the three of us here, and we were really okay with that. And then we got a very big (and of course pleasant) surprise. So if everything goes well over the next six months or so, we're going to be a family of four.

Given our past history, the joy of this news is tempered with more than a little terror. But so far things are going well. I'm taking good care of myself, and Mike's taking excellent care of me, and we have every hope for a good outcome this time. So here's to the start of some really exciting times at our house--keep us in your thoughts and please keep reading, because now's the time when stuff gets interesting.

Posted by jenny at 01:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

It was a pretty quiet weekend at our house. We mostly stayed in and took it easy, as we're going to be very busy over the upcoming holiday weekend. It didn't help that Ev and I had some kind of weird cold thing too--I was miserable on Saturday and Ev's been on and off since Friday. We're both fine today though, so I'm hoping whatever it was has passed.

I'm starting to understand how it is to raise a little boy. Take, for instance, the games that were popular at our house over the last few days. The first one I call "Piggy", in which Evan prompts Mike to burp and then shouts, "Daddy tiggy!". This occurs over and over until Mike is about ready to vomit. Luckily I'm unable to burp on command (I guess I didn't learn enough from my brothers) so I don't get involved in this game.

The second is another lovely game which is as yet unnamed. In this game, Evan farts (which we call "stinker", though I'm not sure why), and then blames one of us. He'll make a big show of blowing one, and then turn to me and say reproachfully, "Mama! Tinker!" And then it's my job to deny the stinker, at which time he'll blame Mike--"Daddy! Tinker!". This also goes on for great lengths of time. Ev gets great joy out of this game, and of blaming his stinkers on others in the house.

The funniest thing is, we didn't teach him any of this stuff--at least, not exactly. He picked it up on his own. We're enjoying his sense of humor and how he's interacting with us. And of course, Mike and I are about as immature as they come, so the toilet humor always goes over well. What a family.

Posted by jenny at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The other night, Mike was flipping through the tv channels after dinner, looking for something to watch. Evan starts saying, "Attus Hattai! Attus Hattai!" over and over, grabbing for the remote. We could not figure out what he wanted, but the remote clued us in that he was looking for a particular program.

Attus Hattai? Mike and I kept saying it to each other, trying to understand what Ev meant. After much deliberation and confusion, we realized he was trying to say "Action News at 5", which meant he wanted the news on channel 24. Once we got that tuned in, he smiled broadly at us and settled in contentedly to watch the weather.

Posted by jenny at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Evan and I, February 2002 and November 2005. Time flies when you're having fun.

Posted by Mike at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Evan's new thing these days is writing. Yes, you read that correctly. Not writing like a novel or even his name, but he is taking an interest in writing. For a while now, he's known how to say and recognize his numbers, and now he's suddenly able to recognize most letters too. And this is thanks to his loving parents, and thanks in part to the amazing Aquadoodle.

If you don't know, the Aquadoodle is a big mat you put on the floor that you can draw on. You use a special pen filled with water, and where the mat gets wet it turns from white to blue. Very cool toy, and nice because there's no mess. But the coolest thing about it for Evan is that the alphabet and numbers 1-10 are printed along the border of the mat, outlined in white. So Ev can trace the outline, and in doing that he's writing the letters and numbers himself.

Evan has had a ball writing for the last few days. He'll sit there and count out loud while he traces the numbers. If you've never heard him count, it's awesome. I'll try to get a video of him doing it. Until then though, I'll describe what it sounds like--"Un, poo, shee, por, tive, tix, tewen, et, nye, ten!". So great. We've got a counting, writing, alphabet knowing little man on our hands. We cannot be stopped.

Posted by jenny at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, it's finally happened. I've been rendered obsolete. Evan changed his own diaper yesterday without any help. Once he can open a string cheese by himself, I'm no longer needed here.

These kids are growing up way too fast. I can't believe how the last few years have flown. Our first baby (and by that I mean the first baby among my close circle of friends) will be five in another 3 weeks. Five! And then after Christmas Evan turns four. I remember when my brother started law school and I said, "Evan will be four when you graduate!". It sounded like light years away at the time, and here we are on the doorstep.

Really, the thought of it makes me feel old and busted. Up comes the new hotness.

Posted by jenny at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mike is away for the next few days at the HighEdWebDev conference in Rochester, so Ev and I are holding down the fort. Things are going pretty well so far, aside from Evan pointing at the front door every so often and asking where Daddy is. Luckily, it's one of our usual busy weeks, so therapy and school should distract him a little from Daddy's absence.

Aside from that, things are pretty standard around here. I think Ev and I might go swimming later this afternoon, but that's about the height of the excitement. When I took him swimming on Friday, one of the pool motors or something caught fire and they had to close the pool down. Danger lurking at your local Y--film at 11. Ev was super pissed though because we had only been in the water about 5 minutes when we had to get out. All of that carrying on for such little reward. That's why I want to make up for it today.

For now, I must go "encourage" Ev to clean up. He's back at getting all the DVD's out of the entertainment center again, and I've had about enough of it. When he's grown, I'm going to go over to his house and dump all of the DVD's on the floor and see how he likes it.

Posted by jenny at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This week, we bit the bullet and joined our local YMCA. We've been going back and forth about it for a while, but we finally decided to go ahead and do it. I think being cooped up in the house with Mr. Destructo last week helped sway our thinking. There's open gym and open swim every afternoon here, and that alone will save our sanity this winter.

Today we'll be taking advantage of the open swim, and also signing Ev up for swim lessons. He's been swimming once a week during preschool, and his teachers say he's doing very well. Hopefully a little extra pool time will help him improve that much more (and wear him out, because we all know that's what this is really about).

That's about all the excitement for this week. We're still working our way through the Halloween candy. What's really great is that Ev can't open any of the wrappers himself, so that helps us to regulate his intake a little. Unfortunately, it's doing nothing to regulate my intake, but that's a different story for a different day.

Posted by jenny at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)