Baby #2 News

Poor Kalina. From here on out, she'll be regularly sharing blogspace with her new little sibling. I'll be posting newsposts whenever I have something interesting to tell about Baby 2. And she'll only appear in them if it makes sense for her to.

And yes, I have something interesting to post today! For the past few days I've been suspecting it, but this morning I was absolutely sure: at only 14 weeks pregnant (as of today), I'm definitely feeling baby kicks! (I also regularly feel toddler kicks, especially during diaper changes, but that's a different story). I could even feel them from the outside. They say it's normal to feel kicks earlier in your second pregnancy, but I'm still pretty proud that Baby 2 is making himself/herself known before I'm having much trouble fitting into my skinny jeans.

With Kalina, by the way, I was feeling kicks around 16 weeks--quite early for a first pregnancy. Does this mean I'll have a child more determined to walk than Kalina was? Somebody help.

The timing of this is good: my nausea has been waning, and without it, it's hard for me to remember I'm pregnant. No complaints, it's just nice to have this smooth transition.

Like I mentioned before, I'm still fitting fine into all my clothes. I'm glad. You'll remember that with Kalina, I was highly annoyed that I could still hide my pregnancy a mere 9 weeks before she was born. As much as I happily anticipate wearing my all-time favorite maternity jeans, I'm happier to keep them stowed under Kalina's crib for now.

At my most recent doctor visit, almost 2 weeks ago, we heard the baby's heartbeat and all was well. I'm guessing that weight gain is about nonexistent since the onset of nicer weather has had me chasing Kalina around all sorts of open spaces outdoors. Fine by me, I promise I'm eating healthy.

And that's the update!

What a mess!

At some point in every girl's life, there's a time when cute clothes simply won't do. No, at some point every young girl must reach deep into the hand-me-down Goodwill pile, pull out clothes that kind of fit and adorn herself in them. Even if they don't match.

And so, wearing a red T-shirt and shabby pink pants, Kalina headed outside with Mommy yesterday afternoon for an activity Mommy assured her would be lots of fun: painting.

Having bought the (washable, the box assures me) finger paint a good month ago, it took sunny warm weather to empower me to open the stuff. After all, there's no predicting where Kalina's sticky hands will go next, and I'd much rather nature endure the palm-prints than my house or my cats.

Following a toddler art book's wise guidelines, I'd gathered a bunch of objects for Kalina to paint and print with, from a ball of tinfoil to an empty spool to some pieces of rubbery drawer liner. I also had: 4 colors of finger paint, a stack of pre-torn paper towels, a lidded tupperware with soapy water (just in case), two tupperware lids to use as paint trays, a giant piece of paper and a cookie sheet to carry it all. Kalina made sure to bring her bucket full of flower petals, a pink shovel and a small pink watering can. We headed out to a flat, shady part of the driveway, and I kicked all the dried worms out of our way.

Kalina happily sat down while I spread our painting project in front of us. Which color did she want first? Blue, of course. She readily and without too much suggestion from me picked up the spool, dabbed it in the blue paint, and stroked it onto the paper. Then she did it again. I was delighted!

And she was done. Would she like to try the cool rubber pastry brush that even I could play with for hours? No. Would she like to use a Q-Tip? Absolutely not. How about a stick? Pine needles? The rubber drawer liner? The tinfoil? None of it. She went off to play with her bucket and flowers.

And then came the moment of Mommy truth. Is art about the process or the finished product? What if the finished product would only look like the merest chicken scratches when hung on the fridge? What if the process needs to take at least as long as the preparation did in order to make the whole thing worthwhile? What if Kalina didn't know how much fun she was missing?

And so, "How about another color?" I bribed. We squirted out purple and green, and then added orange, and soon found that the rubber drawer liner pieces would be acceptable to paint with. Mommy felt better, even though Kalina soon wandered off to find her smooth rock.

Next, I resorted to the oldest trick in the book: I started to clean up, figuring it was a win-win situation. Kalina shortly showed more interest than ever, and tried the pine needles, Q-Tips and sticks before we were both satisfied and actually ready to be done.

I'll note here that my worries about mess-making came true. Within 30 seconds of beginning Kalina had splotches of blue paint on her hands, pants, shirt and the bottoms of her shoes. Mother Nature dealt much better with these than Kalina's real mommy would've.

Another note: finger paint is inappropriately named, at least according to my toddler, who would much rather have me clean her hands with paper towels every 2 minutes than actually smear the paint on the paper with her fingers. I should probably count my blessings.

And then, since we were already in messy clothes and good moods, and Mommy's been raking it in with her freelancing lately, we decided it'd be a great idea to head to McDonald's for Kalina's first ice-cream cone, which she dug into with even more gusto than she did with blue paint and a spool. She amazed me with her skills in keeping the mess isolated on the lower part of her face, and in figuring out that the cone, while edible, doesn't really compare to the ice cream.

Photo: Kalina's masterpiece after a day of drying (some of the paint was rather globby). Thanks, Aunt Laura, for the book that inspired it all!

Because Kalina is so much fun...

The Odegaard family has a special announcement to make: we're expecting an addition! That's right, I'm not pudgy, tired and cranky for nothing--I'm now safely past week 12 with Baby #2.

The baby's due date is September 25. So far with the pregnancy, so good. I've had an ultrasound, seen the heartbeat and been nauseated for about 10 weeks of the 12, so I'm as confident as I can be that everything's going well.

Yes, we're excited. Kalina could really use a sibling, and we think a new baby will be cute.

Yes, I also at times feel rather moronic for being in this position. After all, life was only getting easier. However, a baby is always worth it. Kalina was certainly worth it, although I have to say she was more worth it, relatively, for Daddy, who in achieving Kalina endured far less than I did.

How am I feeling? Aside from irrational grumpiness, fatigue, nausea, extreme hunger and the fact that pregnancy only makes the rest of my life harder (yes, I still tell it like it is), I'm doing great. I have found some relief in a product called Sea-Bands that alleviates nausea through acupressure. I never would've believed it if I hadn't been desperate enough to try them.

The only problem about my Sea-Bands, by the way, is that only the child ones were available. Mine is an extraordinarily garish pair that's a pattern of neon green, neon orange, and neon yellow. Fortunately, the weather's been chilly so long sleeves have covered them--so far.

And how did Kalina take the news? Being of limited vocabulary still, she simply said "no." Poor girl, whose world will be rocked. Judging from how well she tends to her stuffed animals, though, this baby will be in pretty good hands with Kalina as a big sister.

Please pray with us for a healthy baby!

Ready, set, mix!

Words Kalina knows: Mixer, apron, flour. Words Kalina doesn't know: cookie, candy, chocolate. And yes, I'm very proud of that.

Kalina's been baking with me for, well, her whole life. Mostly because she's always preferred riding on my hip to pretty much anything else, so whenever I bake, she does too (this applies to far too many other activities, as well).

She's improved in her degree of helpfulness until yesterday morning (more about that later). It started many months ago with her dumping teaspoons and cups of ingredients into a bowl (often missing). More recently, she can cut out biscuits and put them on the baking sheet in an orderly fashion. She also knows that the oven is hot, and that she doesn't like hot things. I've been happy with her progress.

Having baked a cake with Kalina last week that she still talks about with pride in her eyes, I decided we could use another fun bonding activity (because she's not already attached enough, hah) and besides, I wanted brownies. And so first thing yesterday morning I told Kalina that as soon as the dishes were clean, we'd do some baking.

Kalina jumped into action and eagerly helped me start the dishwasher, proclaiming "mixer!" as soon as it began humming. Caught off guard at her urgency (getting her to do anything nowadays is like herding cats), I quickly cleared the counter and outfitted us with aprons. More for fun than anything else, and because whenever Kalina wears hers she demands I do the same.

I pulled over a kitchen chair to bring Kalina up to counter level and we got started: Kalina mostly talked about the mixer and played with anything that spilled and I ran all over the kitchen to try to keep the project moving efficiently and effectively. She helped me pour cups of sugar and flour and teaspoons of baking powder and salt.

Once the ingredients became batter, and therefore yummy, Kalina crossed a new milestone. She discovered, as we all do eventually, that messy beaters are a treasure trove of deliciousness, and all it takes is a finger to sample it*. This is when she became less than helpful: she determined that she'd rather sneak finger-fulls of batter into her mouth than let Mommy know she turned on the wrong burner and a plastic lid was melting on the stove. I probably could've left her to this task all morning, but my better sense kicked in and besides, I wanted brownies.

Finally, all the ingredients were mixed to Kalina's satisfaction, and I was able to pour the batter into the pan without Kalina grabbing any large handfuls (she tried: "Mom, why didn't you tell me that extracting the batter directly from the bowl would be so much more expedient than wasting my time with tiny little portions from the beaters?.").

I slipped the pan into the oven, and we snapped two pictures--Kalina was in the mood to pose. I left most of the mess for the bathtub later, and cleaned up the kitchen while the toddler contentedly worked off her sugar high.

I was, by the way, unsuccessful in convincing Kalina that the brownie batter (or later, the frosting) wasn't poop, and I was a little disturbed by the fact that she wanted to eat it anyway. I was, however, successful in not letting Kalina have any of the finished product. Cruel, yes, but she showed no interest whatsoever, she'd had enough sugar for the day and I know from experience that when we open that Pandora's Box there's no closing it, ever. I just don't want to have to remind her every day that it's not an appropriate breakfast food. Yet.

I was proud to see at the end that Kalina's apron now has a brownie batter mark on it. My apron has character too, and I hope this is the beginning of a lot of great baking experiences. With my sweet tooth and Kalina's love of mixing, there's no doubt.

*Note: Brownie batter contains raw eggs. You should never let your child consume raw eggs.