Tales from Toddlerhood : The Lollipop Obsession

Some days I have to think to myself, only a toddler could come up with this, and some people wouldn’t believe the stories that this kid comes up with or has to say. Today, it focuses around Lollipop’s, and a trip to my sisters house yesterday. Just look at that face… it is just screaming I am up to something right?

Well I had an appointment with the midwife practice the perinatologists refereed me to yesterday. Needless to say I was happy to get my prenatal care started was an understatement. Camden, my toddler, and Benjamin the youngest went to hang out with “Auntie Dawn” and their cousin Jacob who is a couple months younger than Camden. She was all prepared with toys, movies, and best of all Lollipops.

My sister is a health freak, so when I say lollipop, I don’t mean your run of the mill sugar filled, processed, crap treats. I mean all organic, made from fruit juice, no added sugar, something I probably could never find in a store or on the internet kind of treat. You get the drift right?

So shortly after I left, my toddler started to get upset. I typically only leave the boys with my mother, or my husband’s aunt, which is their second grandmother anyways, but I wanted to start to get the boys used to spending more time with my sister, and their cousin. Its easy, they only live 4 minutes away.

So here comes the first lollipop to calm him down, and comfort him to know I will be back shortly. No big deal. My appointment lasted slightly longer than I thought it would, and then I hit traffic on my way out of the city, along with all the commuters that were heading my way. By the time I got there, he was on maybe 3 or 4 lollipops. No big deal, its a serving of fruit, and he actually ate food too.

Before I was getting ready to leave with the kids, my sister was giving me a couple shirts for the boys that Jake has grown out of. Camden and Ben both get hand me downs from him, he is HUGE! He is not even 3 years old yet, in 4T and some 5T cloths. TALL and thin! So we put a zip up sweat shirt on Camden to try it on, and he looks at my sister and I with a totally straight face, and another lollipop in his hand, and says “This sweat shirt is making me sticky, take it off” LOL!

Are you sure it isn’t the 942nd lollipop you have in your hand that is making you sticky? It is the shirt?

Oh the joys of Toddlerhood!

Our Scare

I have been overall feeling like I have been hit by a truck. With Camden, I had horrible morning sickness, and with Benjamin I breezed through pregnancy with no issue what so ever. So I am kind of middle of the road this time around, although having two children, one of which is just starting to walk, and the other who has picked up the habit of talking back, makes the adventure slightly different.

I like to think I have been keeping up as good as I can on top of keeping up with work, commitments I have made, and writing deadlines I cannot miss. Although Will has been a great help, he cannot help all day, or when he is at class, or any other things he has with the fire department at this point.

Yesterday I woke up bleeding. I FREAKED out. As I am sure anyone in my situation would have done. The first thing I did was call Will to see what time he could come home, then I called my mother to come and sit with the children, and then finally I got the run around as to who I could see for an ultrasound, and blood work to see what was going on. Since I had not picked a prenatal care provider yet, as I still have one more to interview before making my final decision, it was almost impossible to get anyone to see me!

I ended up speaking with a nurse at the one practice I have interviewed and considered, and she said the on call for their practice would agree to have me come in, and check out what was going on. Finally around noon time I had an ultrasound, and exam with the OB, as well as a blood draw. Everything looks ok, the baby still has a good heartbeat for the gestational age, and there is no noticeable source of bleeding, which means it was probably a one time thing.

Thankfully it has stopped, and I will remain on "modified bed rest" until at least the end of my first trimester. UGH! The couch and living room set up is making it a lot easier with the kids, but it still sicks!

16 Month Check In

Tomorrow Benjamin will be 16 months old. Wow! Where does time go?
So we have a ton of new developments in the past month, so I figured I would just list all the cool new things he is doing and has accomplished!

• He is now WALKING! I mean FULLY walking. Getting up, and going. Not holding onto the table or various items... walking on his own!
• His new word is Doggie... It is SO cute! Especially when he sees Sox & Fenway... he says DOGGIE! So smart!
• Eating like a champ! He eats everything in sight. Literally! One day last week I made three grilled cheeses. One for him, one for Camden, and one for myself... He ate all of his, and a triangle off of Camdens!
  
• He recognizes people and can name some of us. Dada, Mama, Lala... all the people he sees frequently. Next I see Ole and Momo being added to the vocab!

I couldn't be more proud of my little man. He has made such amazing strides in the past couple months. And is almost fully up to where he should be for his age range. Birth to Three has been so amazing, and I absolutely LOVE our therapist!!

Engine 260 Muster in Milford

Second year in a row we were a part of it, and it was also the second year we went as a family. This year though, Echo Hose took back more than just dirt on their gear! Two trophies, and one of them was ALMOST first place!

I was so proud to be supporting my husband... we all had a lot of fun. So, here are some of the pictures from the day. I think I am officially the Echo Hose camera lady at this point.

The Midnight Alarm Game..

Will after The Midnight Alarm

The Men winning tug of warWinning round two, and off to the finals!
Camden & David
Ben was on my back most of the day, so here was when he hung out in the stroller for a bit.



Losing the last tug of war game... putting them in second place.

Overall, we had a lot of fun. Looking forward to next year!

Daddy & His Boys

Will is going to hate me for this, but he knew full well I was taking a picture of the situation he got himself into last night while playing with the boys after dinner. Enjoying some peanut butter cookies, Camden coaxed him into playing in the pop up tent fire truck on the back deck.
Of course he got stuck, and couldn't get back out. LOL! If you look carefully... Camden is inside the fire truck up in the front "driving" daddy around. Ben just wanted to hang on for the ride and steal some of Daddy's cookies...

I love catching these moments... they truly are priceless.

Writing Writing Writing!

Believe it or not, I just got picked up by another website! One of the biggest in parenting at that!

I had e-mailed a couple large parenting sites when we announced our third pregnancy, since it seems like pregnancy writers, and women writing about their pregnancy is certainly the new "in" thing in publishing. I got a couple e-mails back, but the one that sat best with me was Babble.com

I have been looking for a chance to write for them for a while, and after being invited to their VIP party in NYC during BlogHer (thanks Jen for the hook up!) and then emailing with them afterward, it was a no brainer where to go!

My two first posts are up and active on the website as we speak :

Introductions Aren't My Strong Point

and

OB in a Haystack - Detailing my difficult time I am having trying to find a prenatal care provider right now.

Anyways, I know my awesome family supports me in all I do, so I thought I would let everyone know!

Enter Your Guess!

If you are a part of our family, or have been around since I was pregnant with Camden, you will know that I also have made an "Expect Net" game for each child where all of our friends and family can enter their guesses to when, weight, and details for the babies birth.

Have fun and enter your own guess!

Baby Elwood #3

Apple Picking

Yesterday we went Apple Picking at Lyman Orchards in Middletown, Connecticut. We try and go at least once every fall as a family tradition that we have made for our little family. We had a blast, and also got some great pictures of the kids.

I wanted to share some of them with our lovely family, and friends who read here!

Camden running off through the rows of apples.Daddy and Ben... Can't you tell where Ben gets his looks from?
Well, at least he has my cheeks!
This is probably the best picture we got of them together. LOL
How cute is this?Camden picking his own apples. Which he proceeded to eat.
How funny is he? He kept giving us cheesy smiles, this was
the best one we got out of him!
Ben LOVED playing with, and chewing on the apples.
Another example of him trying to inhale the apples.
I love this picture because of the way it accentuates his cheeks. LOLWill was able to PRY the camera out of my hands also.

Hope you enjoyed! We had a great time between picking apples, feeding the ducks at the pond, shopping at the Old Country Store The Apple Barrel and taking a nice scenic drive back home. It was an exceptional day with my family. Just in time for a Will to start class again this week.

Just When We THOUGHT We Were Done...

Will & I have himmed and hawwed over having more kids, currently we decided we both have too much going on, and our hands full to have anymore children at this time. We decided that once Camden was in school, and the boys were older, and Will was on a paid fire department we would give it a try for #3.

We made it a point to take precautions to prevent anymore children in our future, but apparently the Gentleman Upstairs had different plans for us, and The Elwood Family.


Enter the mass amount of pregnancy tests I took last week in disbelief that this has actually happened to us! Two people couldn't have been more careful, but apparently no matter what we did it was meant to be.

We will be expecting our third in early May some time. Right around the time Benjamin will be turning 2. It is not that bad, I mean, heck Camden and Benjamin were closer together. But it is still a huge shock and surprise for us.

We are keeping our fingers crossed for a little girl, although I am positive this will be a third son. My grandmother having so many girls really set us Grand children up for a mass amount of sons I guess.

Although, the pink would be a refreshing change in my life that is filled with footballs, and fire trucks.

We'll see come Christmas time!