June 9: It’s been a good week. My work has been really hectic recently, but coming home in the evening to hang out with Bryan and Andrew is lovely. Last weekend, we had plans to go camping, but they fell through due to rainy weather. So instead we tried to go hiking out at Blue Mounds on Sunday. As we arrived, the skies opened up with rain, so we had a change of plans and decided to head underground. The Cave of the Mounds was a fun outing. Andrew did really well in the cave. In the last week, we’ve also gone biking around Lake Monona with Andrew a couple times. Pictures of our caving experience, of Andrew picking radishes from our garden, and of us biking are in the gallery. Our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share also started this week. We’re so excited to get produce straight from a local farm every-other week for the summer. For more information on our great CSA, see the Vermont Valley Community Farm’s website.
New baby on the way?
June 6: I’m not going to publish this until we make our news public, but it appears that Andrew may be a big brother! I took a pregnancy test on Thursday, and it came back negative. However, when I tried it again on Sunday, June 3, there it was. A faint blue plus on the pregnancy test. In a stunned state, I said, “Oh my god!” Andrew then jumped around on the bed proclaiming, “Oh, my god! Oh, my god!” Good thing I hadn’t exclaimed anything more colorful!
The rest of our day was a great one. We went on a trip out to Blue Mounds/Cave of the Mounds, to Mount Horeb (where I poked around in a bookstore for books on siblings and having a second child), and then over to the Mustard Museum. I’ve been a little surpised how this new develoment has created within me a new, fierce wave of love and devotion for Andrew. I find myself even more tender and loving toward him, and I think he’s just the best little person around.
Starting a new pregnancy is really different this time. I still have feelings of disbelief and shock and find myself saying things to bryan like, “apparently we’re going to have a new baby. ha!” It just seems so odd that everything feels just the same as it was last week, but a little plus on some random stick that I bought at Walgreens foretells some major changes on the way. This time, however, I have seen and felt first hand how a pregnancy progresses. If it’s at all like last time, I’ll have zero symptoms until late July.
According to my caluclations, the baby’s due date is February 3 or Feb. 8 (depending on how I calculated it). That’s just not too far away! At this point, I think we’re going to wait until we’re close to 12 weeks before sharing out news. I just made my first appointment with my doctor for July 3 Now that I’ve gotten used to the idea for a few days, I sort of want to start telling people. But last time, I really enojyed (especially in retrospect) having that period when it was just a secret between me and Bryan. A wonderful little secret.
Amidst my flood of thoughts, I have several fears. What if this pregnancy terminates? It happens a lot of the time. How do I tell Heather about this? She so wants a baby… Then there are more practical concerns. We were supposed to go skiing with Bryan’s family in February. Gosh darn it! I don’t think that will happen! I wonder if we should tell them earlier so they can change plans. And then there’s my concern about February in general. That’s a cold, illness-prone month for a baby to be born. I don’t think I’ll get out walking much like I could with Andrew. Oh well!
I’ve also started sending out feelers to the baby. I feel like a mama whale singing down into the deep waters for her little one. “Hello! Is anyone there?” I felt Andrew’s presence so strongly while he lived inside of me. It took a while, though. I mean, at this point, the baby is just mostly a bundle of cells. Maybe by late this summer, I’ll start to get a sense for who this new little person is. It feels good to open up my heart to the new little wonder growing in my belly. There’s a channel of love and contentment that’s started flowing from me to the wee one. Now, no bigger than a sesame seed, I hope it already feels loved.
So that’s my update. Big news! Big changes! What a wonderful time.
~Althea
Parties and parades
June 1: We had a great time tonight at a birthday party for one of the little girls with whom Andrew goes to day care. Sonora turned three, and it was so fun to watch Andrew’s little friends all playing together.
The evening was a little bittersweet, though, because both Elyse and Sonora are leaving Karen’s day care this week. They are both moving on to preschools, but that leaves Andrew and Peri as the two big kids. How does time move so fast!? Pictures of Sonora’s birthday party are in the gallery.
Elyse gave Andrew a note that she had dictated that said:
Andrew,
I like your curly hair. I love you Andrew. I am going to miss you.
Elyse
A few other pictures of the Memorial Day parade and a trip to the zoo are in the gallery.
Carpe Diem – year two!
May 28: Yesterday was a perfect day. It started with Andrew sleeping until nearly 8 am. Andrew normally wakes up at 6:15, and I think he has slept past 7:15 a handful of times in his life. That meant that I got to read Cricket in bed (one of my favorite activities ever) for 45 blissful minutes. When Andrew woke up, he was as sunny as the day, and the two of us made hash browns as a breakfast surprise for Daddy. After our slow and cheerful morning, we headed outdoors to plant the rest of our vegetable garden (summer squash, butternut squash, cucumbers, herbs, and beets in addition to the tomatoes and peas we planted last month). We weeded and gardened, and Andrew did a great job helping us dig and water the plants.
After Andrew’s nap, we headed over to Michael’s house for a Memorial Day bash. This time two years ago, mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and we are all so happy and relieved beyond belief to be able to celebrate this milestone together. Last year we had a Carpe Diem party for mom (see pictures here). Next year on this weekend, Maretta and Kyle will be getting married!
Michael and his two roommates, Lisa and Alice, each got a kitten in the last couple weeks. Alice has Portia, Lisa has Small Horse, and Michael has Xaxxon. Pictures of the party and of the sweet kitties are in the gallery. Carpe Diem!
Phase III of website retrieval – CHECK!
May 28: While Bryan and I watched the start of season two of the TV show The 4400 last night, I was able to upload the bulk of the missing photo albums to the gallery. All the data that was on this website prior to the crash of 2006 has been restored (see here for the back story). You can now look back at all baby Andrew’s pictures from 2005 and 2006 including the ones that were previously missing. Any interruption in website access that you may have noticed the last day or so was due to the picture restoration process. My next (and hopefully final) step will be to go back to all the entries from 2005 and re-connect them to the appropriate gallery albums. Stay tuned!
Mayish happenings
May 28: Andrew won’t nap. He’s been in his bed for about 15 minutes, shouting, “Daddy, WHERE ARE YOU?” It’s a little wearing on us all. Poor bubby needs to take a nap! We had a fun morning, though. We biked down to the Monona Memorial Day parade where we saw politicians and beauty queens and clowns and fire trucks, and (Andrew’s favorite) a person dressed up like a moose. Then we biked into Monona and played at an amazing community-built playground. Andrew had great fun in the sand box (I think it was his first sand box experience). On the bike ride home, he fell asleep for the last couple blocks, so I think that made nap time the torture that it is.
Now he is singing, “Bah bah black sheep…” At least he’s not super sad. Sometimes he says, “Daddy, come play!”
Not really what you want your napping child to be thinking:)
I have a couple of new albums up in the gallery. One is of a party we had with our neighbors last Wednesday night, and the other is of random moments from the last week including a field trip out to a beautiful piece of land in southwestern Wisconsin on Friday. I can’t believe May has come and gone! We got the rest of our vegetable garden planted yesterday, and we cleaned out a little weed patch next to the garage and planted cosmos and Rudbeckia seeds. It was a perfect day.
And now, on to June!
Vacation in Bayfield, Wisconsin
May 21: Bryan, Andrew, and I just got back from a great family vacation to Bayfield, a fun little town at the very tippy top of Wisconsin, right on Lake Superior. Gathering Waters hosts an annual retreat for the staff of Wisconsin’s 50 land trusts. Last year, we went to Door County (see last year’s post), and this year, it was Bayfield. The drive was long (about 7 hours including some stops), but Andrew did really well. We got a little beautiful outdoor time in before a cold front blew into town and removed some of our recreating plans.
Pictures of apple orchards and a cute little boy running here and there are in the gallery.
Mama is out of favor
May 21: I missed posting on Mother’s Day by about a week, but I do have some pictures from that general time period in the gallery. It’s interesting that this holiday is coinciding with another very Daddy oriented time for Andrew. Back in January and February, he really wanted very little to do with me. It was as if Daddy were the sun in his world. For the last few months, I’ve been back in the loving, good graces of our young son, but these past few weeks, my suit seems to have fallen out of favor. He’ll let me play with him and give him baths, but for example, this evening, he suddenly needed his Daddy. I mentioned that Dad was in the back yard. So Andrew stood at the screen door yelling, “Daddy, DADDY. Where ARE you? WHERE ARE YOU?” Sweet boy loves his dad. And I love them both:)
Twinkle twinkle
May 15: I just had to share a song that Andrew has been singing. He is starting to modulate his voice, so he actually sort of sings the song,
“Twinkle, twinkle little star. I would like; chocolate cake.”
Not sure where he came up with it, but it cracks me up. Note: Andrew has never eaten chocolate cake.
Also, last night, Bryan and I were curious about how many animals Andrew can identify, so I sat down and counted, and I came up with about 75. The boy loves his animals. It makes me so proud.
Uncle Bubba (Michael) put up a fun post on his blog about spending mother’s day with Andrew, my mom, and me.
On Thursday, we’re off to Bayfield!
Rhubarb pie and a pouty bottom lip
May 12: I never got around to posting last weekend, but I wanted to share the story of Andrew helping me to make a rhubarb pie. We were out in the yard, and I decided to pick some rhubarb. Andrew was quite a sight as he purposely tromped back to the house, holding two big, leafy rhubarb stalks in each hand. He loves to help, and he was a good helper as I chopped up the rhubarb. I gave him some pieces of rhubarb dipped in sugar, and he gobbled them up. Then he started pulling handfuls of raw rhubarb and eating them too. He helped me stir up the pie mixture, and he nearly ate the pie crust by diving into it, mouth open. I had to feed him niblets to keep him from taking a handful out of the middle of the topped pie. He seemed to enjoy the cooked version (along with Michael’s custard) as much as he liked helping to make it.
You might also enjoy seeing a picture of Andrew’s pouting lip. He has begun folding his bottom lip out whenever he is unhappy, and it’s so cute, it’s hard not to smile.
Pictures from the last couple weeks are in the gallery.