The Cathcarts

Pregnancy Ticker

Sorry for no post lately, for the first time since starting this blog, I have to say that I just haven’t had any desire to.  I can say that I have officially hit the point in my pregnancy that I am TIRED.  It also doesn’t help that Jaxson is no longer doing naps (most days), but instead doing an hour of quiet time, which is for my mental state rather than for him.  However, he is going to bed at 7:30, which is very nice, but it makes for long afternoons.  I have also hit the point where sleeping is not very comfortable anymore.  I am limited to two positions, the left side or the right side, which stinks because I usually sleep on my back.  With my pregnancy with Jaxson, I never had a hard time sleeping.  I was sleeping through the night without waking up until the very last day, but like my midwife keeps telling me, "Remember Stephanie, things are always different with a second pregnancy."  Boy is she right.  Anyways, on to some more fun stuff that’s been going on here very recently.  Lastnight, we went to Pump It Up for Rebecca Hinderaker’s 4th birthday party.  Becca is the daughter of my high school friends Clint and Rachel Hinderaker.  We had such a great time.  It is a large place with a lot of huge blow up bounce houses/slides/games.  Not only did the kiddos have fun, but so did the adults.  I had a bit of jealousy when Brad was able to do all of the fun stuff with Jaxson and go through the obstacle course with him. It was also fun to see Jaxson and Becca interact with each other; they are so cute together.  Today, we had the Barrons and the Learys over to watch the Iowa game.  Not quite the outcome that we wanted, but the end score was much better than I thought it would be.  They played much better than I thought they would, which gives me hope for their last game against Minnesota.  Some more exciting news is that we are really working hard on the potty training this weekend.  Jaxson was in big boy underwear all day and did a GREAT job with telling us when he had to go potty.  He even went on his own one time and told us afterwards.  So I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that he continues to do so well.  Tomorrow it’s off to church and more family time

Jaxson and Becca at her birthday party.

Going through the obstacle course.

Today, Jaxson and I headed to Backyard Adventures for his friend, Morgen’s, 4th birthday party.  A lot of his friends were there so they had a great time playing, eating, and watching Morgen open her presents.

The boys at Backyard Adventures having no fun at all

The birthday girl, Morgen, getting ready to blow out her candles.

Here’s Jaxson’s annual picture in the pumpkin.

2008

2007

2006

Jaxson, Grandma Pam, and I went downtown to the last Farmer’s Market of the season on Saturday despite it being quite cold.  What can I say, the pregnant lady had to stock up on her favorite bread before the end of the season.  Jaxson had a good time being pulled around in the wagon and riding the train, but soon informed me that he was cold and we headed home. 

If you don’t have any children, this post will probably be pretty boring for you and you can just skip it if you want to, but for those of you with children, it might be pretty interesting.  Every Tuesday, Jaxson and I attend Brighter Beginnings.  I know I’ve talked about this a little bit before, but it’s a small group of moms getting together with a leader from the WDM public schools and we discuss a topic each week or have a speaker come talk to us on a certain topic.  All of us moms in our group have a child in the 2-3 year old range.  The kids are off in their own area doing crafts, reading books and playing with all of the other kids and teachers, so this is an awesome time for us moms to relax and "get away."  Last Tuesday, we got on the topic of sleep because a mom in the group was having a horrible time with her three year old daughter at bedtime.  Another mom in the group had previously recommended that she read the book "Healthy Sleeping Habits Happy Child" by Mark Weissbluth, who is a pediatrician and a father of four who has been studying children’s sleep habits for 30 years.  She came back this week and said that she had read the book and that it has changed their lives.  Her daughter is much easier to get to bed and she is now a happier child.  So I got to thinking that I should read this book.  For the most part, Jaxson is an excellent sleeper; however, with the transition to his new room, we’ve been having some issues with him coming out and not getting to sleep until late (10:30ish).  Nap time was also becoming increasingly difficult, so it made me start to wonder if he was getting to the age where he was ready to give up his nap.  So I just had a lot of questions that I wanted answered.  I went out and bought the book that afternoon and starting reading it immediately.  I have to say that I have learned SO MUCH from this book already.  After reading only 100 pages so far, I’ve learned that Jaxson is not ready to give up his naps, as children his age are supposed to have around 12.5 hrs of sleep everyday.  Since he doesn’t sleep 12 hours at night, then he needs a nap during the day.  I also learned that he needed to be going down earlier than his 2:00 time that I was putting him down, so we have since moved up naptime to 1:00 and it is working perfectly.  We have also moved up bedtime from 9:00 to 8:00, which we are still getting the kinks out there, but have had a few interruptions with being sick and Halloween.  I originally bought the book to help me with my issues with Jaxson, but I found that it is really going to help me with the new baby also.  One of the biggest things that I have learned so far is that our kids need to go to bed when they first start showing signs of being tired, for most kids that is between 6:30-8:00.  You don’t want to wait until they hit the overtired state (fussy, crying, hyperactive) because that is then when the child has a harder time falling asleep and it will most likely take longer.  "We need to watch our child, not the clock."  Something else that I have learned is if you put your child to bed early, when they are tired, they will not wake up any earlier then they normally do, which is a common myth in our society.  Go ahead try it. . . I dare ya.  We tried it the first night with putting Jaxson to bed over an hour earlier than we normally do.  He was asleep at 8:20 (which is super early for him) and got up at 7:45, which is 15 minutes longer than usual, so he got almost two more hours of sleep than he normally does.  These are just a couple of things that I have learned already.  If it has helped 1 blog reader than it’s been worth the time it’s taken to type this up.  The book also has a great format in that it is divided up by age groups, so if you are looking for something on a certain age like I was, it was super easy to find.  So with that, good night and sleep tight

Tonight was Beggar’s Night or Trick and Treakin’ night, as Jaxson calls it, in WDM and boy did a certain three-year-old score it big.  Despite the crappy weather, we still had fun.  We even had to empty his bucket once just to fit more candy in it.  We had several neighbors buy special treats just for Jaxson; he’s quite the popular guy on the block.  One of our neighbors asked him earlier this week what he wanted for Halloween and Jaxson told her cookies.  So she went to Panera today and bought him a giant chocolate chip cookie; however, her daughter didn’t know it was for Jaxson, so she ate it.  Oh well, that is just fine with me because he got way too much as it is. 

The prep work

The Cat in the Hat ready to get some candy.

Miah dressed up as Dorothy and Amisha was a little sheep.

Jaxson’s friends - Jack and Ben as Thing 1 and Thing 2 (also from The Cat in the Hat), Miah, Morgen as a pretty butterfly, and Baby Gavin as Thing 3.

Well, I’m almost 30 weeks and can’t believe it.  I feel really good; I can’t complain, but I do every now and then.  Other than having a hard time breathing and hate picking things up off of the floor, I’m doing well.  The official induction date will be Jan. 5th, unless my favorite midwife is on a day or two after that, then I may choose to delay it until then, we’ll just see. 

29 weeks

Last night we had our neighbors, Matt, Ann, Miah and Amisha over to carve our pumpkins that we had gotten a couple weeks ago at the pumpkin patch.  We had a great time and the kids LOVED seeing them lit up. 

I bet you can guess who did the Tiger hawk (Brad), mine is the scary/funny looking face, I carved Jaxson’s in the front, Ann did Amisha’s pumpkin and Matt did Miah’s on the far right.  We were pretty proud of the results.

Trying to get Mommy with the leaves. . . I’m still finding leaves down my shirt

Jaxson and his friend Drake.