Camping!

We went camping again with Grandma, Grandpa Dennis, and Amanda. This time their best friends also came: Bill and Denise and their kids, Alyssa and Emily. Again, we had so much fun. I didn't do much but hide in the air conditioned camper this time. I was so hot but it was still so fun to get to see everyone and sit outside when it was cooler and eat all the yummy food. :)

Right as we got there, it started pouring and I mean like running from your car inside, you got soaked to the skin. But to add insult to injury, Bill and Denise's camper had a flat tire and Bill and Grandpa Dennis had to fix it. :(  Luckily, it stopped after that and we were able to get everything set up without getting a shower.

Maggie could not get to sleep Friday night. She was buzzing with excitement. She was up until after 11 pm and was up FOR THE DAY by 5.30 am. I made her stay in bed for a while but she never went back to sleep. Somehow, I guess the adrenaline, she went all day without a nap or anything. She absolutely loved being around the big girls. All of whom were so sweet to her. Seriously, it was awesome to watch.

They went on a bike ride, hiking/climbing, fishing, geocaching, and they played badminton. Jan, again, took amazing pictures. Woo hoo!

Maggie, Amanda, and Alyssa

Maggie and Alyssa

Emily, Alyssa, Maggie, and Amanda

This and that

Maggie and I were in bed reading a book about babies in utero being able to hear. And Maggie said, you mean Ruby can hear us. I told her yes, as long as she's awake she should be able to hear us most of the time. So Maggie got super close to my tummy and started talking to Ruby. And Ruby went crazy! She started kicking and punching and doing somersaults. It was crazy. I don't know if it was Maggie specifically or just a voice or what but it was very cute.

I have been so tired so lately and I still have to work a lot and do school work so Maggie's been getting the short end of the stick too often. So last Sunday, I had a Maggie day. We went and got IHOP for breakfast and went to see Inside Out that afternoon. I haven't been in a movie theater in years. It was nice and cold. :)

Laurie and I took the girls to Great Wolf Lodge. Oh my, it was exhausting. I think the girls had a really good time though. I am sorry to say we didn't get a single picture.

Maggie started her swimming lessons last week. I actually went to the first class and forgot her bathing suit. Oh, pregnancy brain. However, we were there for the second class. Well, actually, they just made it the first class. She did really well. She was very scared but her teacher was very sweet and reassuring. I think she'll really like the lessons.

So, it turns out I'm severely anemic. Luckily, you can take a pill for that, which I am. I definitely feel better. Hopefully, that will work for the next six weeks or so I have left.

Fourth of July and the dentist

Grandmo came to visit for a day. The girls were very happy to see her. We went to Cheesecake Factory with Laurie and Ella. Then we went swimming. Well, I didn't go because I don't have a maternity swim suit anymore. Which stinks because now I'll have to buy another one because I'm taking Maggie to Great Wolf Lodge. I had one forever (or since I was pregnant with Maggie); I probably threw it away this past December. :(

Maggie and Grandmo slept in Maggie's bed which must have been quite crowded. We were sad she had to go but luckily, she is able to come visit pretty often.

So the day Grandmo left, we went to the follow-up appointment for Maggie's tooth. Oh dear God! It was awful. It was supposed to be less than an hour. She wouldn't let them use the big tools without freaking out so we got sent to a specialist. We saw them and they said they would take it out in the afternoon. So we went and got lunch and ran errands and tried to figure out what to do for the next couple of hours. Then we went back. This time they used the gas and local anesthetic. She got super giggly and was very cooperative until they pulled out the big (ie, loud) tools and she freaked out again. So they told us she'd have to come back next week and be sedated. Ugh!!!

We did our Fourth of July celebration at Hurst again. This year we didn't get there until after 7pm because I knew I couldn't take the heat. And even that late for the first hour or so I thought I might pass out a few times.

 Here's Maggie on the bus ride over.

 Lynette and her family were there again this year.

 And Lynette and Maggie danced again this year. Luckily, this year I took pictures.

 Maggie and Grandpa having a good time.

 She's so sweet watching fireworks.

So we went back to the dentist today and we're finally done. They sedated her and it was weird. It was very similar to a drunk person. She couldn't stand or walk on her own. And she told me weirder stories than normal. But, thank the Lord, it's done. She has a silver tooth in the back.

I thought I would update on the pregnancy too. First of all, I am huge. My tummy is way out. What's weird is I haven't gained that much weight at all (ESPECIALLY compared to how much I gained with Maggie). I have really bad hip and back pain. I'm wearing a pregnancy belt thing that helps a lot with the back pain but not much with the hip pain. I've started seeing my chiropractor about the hip pain.

I have no cravings or really much interest in eating. I feel like crap when I'm hungry and when I eat too much and I just really don't care about eating. The only thing I really crave is ice. Oh, how I love to crunch on ice.

I'm tired and hot most of the time. And I can get quite irritable about nothing. I have a lot of things ready for the baby. Not everything but I'm getting there. As of tomorrow I'll be 30 weeks. I am so ready for Ruby to be here and not be pregnant anymore.

Tall-ish and Skinny

Perhaps the key to writing more often is to just write. As soon as I published my catching up post, I thought a bunch more things I wanted to write about. Hmmm. . .

First, Maggie lost her first tooth! We had just finished brushing teeth and she said, Mommy my tooth feels weird. I knew immediately but she let me touch it to make sure and sure enough it was super, duper loose.

She was not so sure about the whole thing so I just kept talking up the tooth fairy. Eventually she got a bit more excited but then she wanted to know if it would hurt, if it would bleed, etc. I just kept telling her she would be fine and not to worry. She finally pulled it out with lots of encourage from the other kids at her babysitter's house. She was so excited. Now she has another loose tooth and she is stoked for another visit from the tooth fairy.

I also have a couple of pictures from our science projects. Not many because I had to switch to a non-iphone and I HATE it. HATE!

This is our constellation box. We are still working on it but this is after cutting and painting it. I'll try to take more pictures when it's all set up.

Maggie had her dentist appointment. She has a broken tooth. It's a piece off the back. He said she must have broken it on hard candy or something. So we go back next week and they'll fix it. I guess they'll gas her for it. I've never had gas so I'm not sure what to expect. Other than that, her teeth are perfect.

She also had her yearly with her regular doctor, Dr. Arca. Dr. Arca has taken care of her since she was born so Maggie really likes her.

Maggie was 36.5 lbs. last year and this year she is 39.4. She was 43 3/4" last year and 47" this year. Woo hoo! An actual growth spurt. She's now in the 45th percentile for height. Of course she's only in the 6th percentile for weight. Tall-ish and skinny.

Catching Up

I'm not sure why I haven't written much lately. Maybe it's because I'm pregnant. Maybe because we've just been kind of chugging along. Who can say? But I feel like enough time has gone by that I can at least do a big catching up post. So here's most of what we've been up to.

We've been doing normal school work. There's not much new on that front. We're continuing to do normal reading and writing. She's doing a bit of handwriting work because she is consistently doing some of her letters and numbers backwards so I wanted to nip that in the bud. I have her fill out a daily calendar where she writes the day, month, date, year, weather, and high and low temperature.

Her reading is awesome. If she can't sleep after I turn the light out, she'll get some books and her little book light and read to herself. Yesterday, at our Father's Day dinner, she was watching golf and reading the closed captioning. And yet, she will still occasionally tell someone she can't read. I just smile and nod now.

We're doing kill and drill in math to memorize addition facts up to 10+10=20. She loves it. We spent a long time working on various graphs (mainly pictographs and bar graphs) and how to read them. Then we worked on addition for a long time to show her why it worked, various ways to get the answers, how to find missing variables, etc.

We're on the tail end of learning about space. We've been on it for a while now. We read a million books, watched Magic School Bus episodes, Bill Nye episodes, and Apollo 13. She was bored by Apollo 13 but I was riveted. I love that movie. We made a moon cycle using Oreo's (she loved that one), a planet, a mini-book of star and planet facts, and we're making a constellation box.

When I was reading her a book about the first moon landing, I made a comment about how we could watch the real footage on youtube if she wanted. She turned to me wide-eyed and said, this is a true story?

So I have a parenting success story that I'm excited about but seems shockingly obvious now. Two things that drive me crazy: one, her toys all over the freaking place! Two, nagging her about what she has to get done before she can watch TV or play on her Kindle. So, I decided to make a "Before Screens" list. It's brilliant. I have all the normal things like get dressed, brush hair and teeth, make the bed. But then also she has to pick up all her toys, both upstairs and downstairs. I don't why this felt so genius to me but I was picking up her toys in my room for the upteenth billion time and I thought, I could make her do this. Like I said, shockingly obvious. I also make her do all of her school work first. And it's great because when she comes and starts bugging me, I just say, have you checked your list. No nagging necessary. And she doesn't know how to turn the wifi off and on on the Kindle so I just have to make sure I turn it off every night and she just thinks it isn't working and I have the magic touch.

The other night she was watching a bit of The Fox and the Hound while I showered. I had gotten out and was sitting next to her while she watched. I wasn't really paying attention because I was putting on lotion but all the sudden, I looked over at her, and she had tears streaming down her face. It was the scene in the movie where the mom takes the fox and leaves him in the forest so he'll be safe from the hound's owner (who is a fox hunter). And as an aside, who the hell wrote this as a movie for children??? It's awful. I pulled her up on my lap and reminded her that the fox ends up happy in the forest and meets his wife there and she sobbed, I don't want him in the forest, I want him with his mama. Ugh, it broke my heart. I've never seen her cry at a movie or book (and we've read Charlotte's Web twice).

As another aside, here's another in the long list of differences in Maggie and Ella. I happened to be at Laurie's house the night they got to the part in Charlotte's Web where Charlotte died and I could hear Ella sobbing from the living room. Poor little thing. I guess Maggie is like me in that: I almost never cry at movies or books. Except book 7 of Harry Potter, I think I cried non-stop the whole book.

We went to her eye appointment. She broke her glasses right before this past Christmas. Hold on, here's the story from the beginning. She originally went to Doctor 1 and he said, her vision is fine but one eye is stronger than the other so she needs glasses temporarily to correct that and then she won't need them anymore. She went back to him a few times and the problem was fixed and he said she'd probably wear them until she was 4 or 5 and be done. Then we changed insurance and had to go to Doctor 2. He had no clue what I was talking about when I explained all that and just seemed to think Maggie had bad eyes. Then at one appointment he said, oh you mean her vision is different in her eyes. What else could I possibly have meant??? At the last appointment with him I took her too, I asked him how much longer he thought she'd need glasses and he said, well she can get contacts at 13 or so and Lasik at 21. When I tried again to explain her original diagnosis, he said, no she'll be in glasses forever. So when she broke her glasses, I didn't replace them. I let her go without and last week we went and saw a new eye doctor after about 6 months with no glasses. And her vision is 20/25. We're going to do every 6 months for now to make sure she doesn't regress but for now she doesn't need glasses anymore.

We had a Father's Day dinner yesterday. We went to a pizza place. Maggie was so tired but they had a pretty good time.