This Post Brought to You by the Letter P and the Number 2

Okay, I'm still here and still pregnant. Not for too much longer though. I'll get to that later. The other big event at our home these days has been Gwen's decision to potty train. It wasn't my idea I promise. We had gone to the store one day and they had little potties on sale so we decided to let her choose one and use the time at the end of my maternity leave to work on potty training. We brought it home and put it away hoping she would forget about it. Well, she didn't and she found it and demanded to get it out right then and use it. She's been using it almost every time since. Except for a set back the last couple days involving the stomach flu. Speaking of which, Gwen is crying about her stomach hurting again which means we're probably in for more vomiting. I'll try to find a moment at work tonight to finish this post.

Phew, she just needed to be snuggled down for her nap, which gives me a few minutes to work on this. Okay back to the potty training: she has really done most of it herself. That's a good thing because I don't know how much effort I'm willing to put into it right now. She has her Winnie the Pooh Poo Chair that sits in our living room and she'll declare that it's "Potty Time!" and run over to it and pull down her pull-ups and pants and use it. She'll even dump the pee in the big toilet, rinse out the little seat, put it back in the chair, and wash her hands, all without really being asked. We're still working on getting her to "make stinky" in the toilet which she still prefers to do in her diaper right before bed for some reason.

Well, like I said things were going really well until Thursday when she woke up with bad diarrhea. That kind-of threw potty training out the window, and my gym plans for the day. Instead, I really worked hard around the house to get things ready for Emily. I moved furniture around, washed baby clothes, and cleaned the carpets. I probably did too much because it set off some pretty strong contractions after lunch and I started to get excited. It was nap time though so I put Gwen down to bed and went to lay down myself and the contractions stopped. Bummer. So, I ended up going into work last night and actually felt the best I had all day even though we were pretty busy there. Yes, we're seeing a lot of stomach virus (vomiting and diarrhea), RSV (congestion and cough), and the real influenza (cough and fever) now. It seems that the flu shot is doing it's job this year and it's the kids that didn't get it that are really sick. That's re-assuring to me because my whole family got the shot so we should be good as long as we keep Emily away from people who have it. So, no visiting if you didn't get the flu shot this year, sorry.

Last night, after work I got home and read for a while finding it hard to fall asleep for some reason and just as I put my book down and walked out of my room to use the bathroom, Gwen's door opened up. I went to pick her up and felt that she was slimy and smelly, covered in vomit. We spent the next couple hours in the yucky cycle of cleaning up throw-up and waiting for the next round to come. That lasted until 3:00 am when I remembered that I had some left-over zofran (anti-nausea) dissolvable tablets from the beginning of my pregnancy and gave her half of one. I love that medicine. Within about 10 minutes her color was back and the vomiting had stopped. Since her bedding was in the wash I had her sleep in our bed. For the first half hour she wanted to go downstairs and eat breakfast (did I mention that I LOVE zofran?) because her tummy felt better. I talked her into laying still and she was out in a couple minutes. That's when my contractions started back up again. It was about 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning by this time. This time they were a lot stronger and getting closer. I said a little prayer that I didn't think I could deal with having a baby after being up all night and Gwen had just fallen asleep and was so sick right now. I just wanted to cry. I was about to wake up Jonathan (who managed to sleep through all the fun) when the contractions slowed down and went away. Gwen still woke us all up at 8:00 this morning and after explaining what our night had been like to Sleeping Beauty (aka Jonathan) I crashed on the couch for a good part of the morning while he and Gwen put puzzles together and watched The Muppets.

Now they're both upstairs asleep while I finish this then I'm going to go join them. I really think that this baby will come in the next few days, I hope that it's not on Valentine's Day because I think it would suck to have your birthday on a holiday. I have to work tonight and have one last huge 11 hour shift tomorrow, then I'm on maternity leave for the next 8 weeks. I promise to call and let people know when the baby gets here.