Friday marked the official start of my second trimester! The second trimester, the milestone most pregnant women welcome with open arms in the hopes that their days of exhaustion and morning sickness are long behind them. This wasn't the case for me with my first pregnancy, so I'm not as ready to break out the party hats as most pregnant women. I am, however, excited to have reached this point of "safety" in my pregnancy in the hopes that I can now really sit back, relax, and look forward to the next 6 months passing by quickly and painlessly (although painlessly is probably wishful thinking!).
I'm still dealing with a bit of all-day nausea. I've been taking Zofran and it's helped, but not without unpleasant side effects of its own. While this pregnancy feels very similar to my first, there are some small differences. The fatigue is wearing off a bit (I swear I wasn't this tired with Philip!) and the sudden onslaught of pregnancy-related acne is finally subsiding (another side effect I don't recall having with Philip). I'm also definitely starting to "show," at least to me, earlier in this pregnancy than with my first, which I had heard is pretty common. I'm excited to have a full-on baby bump, but not so excited for what that will mean as it gets bigger! Philip is getting bigger by the day and it will be interesting, to say the least, to see how juggling a 20 something pound toddler and a baby belly works out!
In other noteworthy news, Philip is changing so much every day. He's so much fun and is such a joy to be around. His physically capabilities continue to increase. He can now climb up and off of the sofa by himself. He can easily reach items on the kitchen table, and he's taken to some other not so charming activities, such as climbing up onto the end tables in the living room.
He's also becoming quite the little independent person. He loves trying to do things by himself, like feed himself with a fork and spoon, help with putting on his clothes, brush his own teeth, and even trying to put on his own shoes. On the flip side of this, discovering you are your own separate being, independent from your parents, also means learning that you don't
always have to do what mommy or daddy say to do (or not do). For example, the once very effective "No touch" command is now obsolete in Philip's mind as he's figured out he
in fact still can touch the super fascinating and awesome item in question despite the fact that mommy and daddy said not to! Fun stuff for sure.
He's not really saying much yet but he can babble for hours in his own toddler language and he really does understand a lot of what we tell him. It amazes me how fast he picks up on things!
For example, he loves Mickey Mouse and Sesame Street. If you ask him where Mickey is, he'll scan the room for his Mickey book, turn to the right page and point him out and say "Dare!" Anytime he finds something you asked him about, that's always the proclamation he makes.
He also knows what he wants (and doesn't want) in terms of food, which has made meal time tricky, to say the least. He only has one molar and still has a difficult time with chewing up food that isn't readily mushable between his gums. He loves scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, toast, yogurt, oatmeal, crackers, cheese, apple sauce, and any variety of toddler-marketed snacks. He currently has an aversion to vegetables which doesn't make his mommy very happy, but we'll get there. Eventually. At his last doctor's appointment he was 31 inches and 22.5 pounds. He dropped off the weight curve in between 12 and 16 months and we've been given orders to fatten him up. Not that he's malnourished or wasting away by any means, he's just all bone and muscle with a metabolism that just won't quit. Oh to be so lucky!
And in other news, we are presently snowbound, and staring, once again, at a whopping 2 feet of snow (at least!) on the ground. Not counting the two snowstorms we've had since the blizzard in December! I'm not quite sure who uprooted our house and placed it down in Wisconsin, but I'd love it if they'd kindly return us to Virginia, where one inch of snow calls for schools to be canceled for two days. Springtime can't come soon enough!
