Baby’s movements have shifted from kicks here and there (often in quick succession) to now feeling body parts jutting out, moving around and thumping. I still get kicks, but the past two days have been full of her pushing and stretching and moving around. My belly is jiggling and lopsided and all kinds of weirdness! I’ve also recently started noticing her getting the hiccups. I hope she’s not a chronic hiccuper like Kate was/is! (She still gets the hiccups every time she laughs really hard. But at least she doesn’t get totally ticked off about it anymore.) She’s definitely getting bigger in there! Some days she seems to turn around, making her seem three pounds heavier.

I also have a bruised rib. Now I don’t know which girl to blame it on, because it’s my left rib where Ember is up in my right rib, so it could just as easily have been Kate who did it to me. Or it could be something totally random that I did. Regardless my bra feels less than spectacular, since the bruised part is right where the underwire lays (yes I’m back to wearing underwire – it’s the only solution to my saggy boobs!) and it kind of hurts a little to take in a deep breath. It’s very weird.

The girls are definitely already working together, I can tell you that much. Kate has been treating me like a jungle gym even more than usual, which is getting more uncomfortable by the week. She likes to sit on my lap and thump her head backward against my chest, which also puts her back right against my belly. She’s also been standing on my lap a lot (trying to climb me), laying on my lap rolling around, crawling on top of me when I’m laying down, and so on. I feel like I’m constantly pushing her off of my belly, since she seems utterly clueless that it’s there. I have discovered that having Ember pushing outward from inside my belly while Kate knocks into the same spot with her elbow or foot is really really tender. I’ve yelped a few times. Neither kid seems to notice. Just me, squashed in the middle.

The braxton hicks in the evening are getting annoying. I get one or two an hour while I’m laying here relaxing and they are most definitely more noticeable now. Given that this is my third baby and how many I got with Kate I know that they’re probably just going to keep on coming for the next 10 weeks. I just wish they didn’t make me have to pee so badly!

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Kate has been having a bit of a rough week with her incisors coming in. It has thus far not been as bad as previous teeth, in that she is actually sleeping all night still, which is utterly amazing. She did have a stretch of unhappy 6am wakeups, the latest of which on Friday when the poor thing was utterly inconsolable. She had her puppy, her sheep, two pacis, her sippy of milk, and a cracker (all of which she asked for), and yet she still just sat there screaming and crying and kicking her feet in frustration. She wouldn’t even eat the cracker or drink the milk. I held her on my lap, rocking and hugging her, but still she kept flailing and sobbing. Finally the motrin and orajel kicked in and the tears stopped, but she was still very clingy for the day.

This is my first real experience as a “military wife” as Den is away for the entire month of March. (Not deployed, thank goodness, but at a training class.) We’re one week in and I’m happy to say it’s going pretty well. I’m used to having Kate all day so it’s just the evening that is an adjustment. It can be a little stressful not having anyone able to step in for an hour so I can get some work done or whatever. I’ve still been working in the evenings after she goes to bed, and some days I have to turn on Elmo so I can print out my lab report or study for an exam. She’s been moderately tolerant, but I hear “Mama! Mama! Mama!!” all day long. All. Day. Long. And it’s about very important things like, “Mama! Elmo! Mama! Shoes! Mama! Cracker??” She feels the need to inform me of pretty much everything. It is still pretty cute though, especially when she says something like, “Mama! Hug??” and then leans up to give me a big hug. I can’t argue with that one!

She is becoming a very chatty child, constantly talking to me though it’s still a lot of made-up words or at least words that aren’t recognizable yet. Today over at someone’s house she pointed to the picture of an angel and said, “Mama? Mama!” Then later she kept repeating “Bufeye.” It took me a while to figure it out, but then I put two and two together and asked if she meant “butterfly.” She nodded in satisfaction. “Buhh-fye!” She’s constantly naming everything she sees, from body parts to colors (she gets them all wrong still) to letters and numbers. Numbers are her favorite right now. She can reliably count to five, and sometimes to ten but she always seems to miss one number. A few times I have heard her counting to 20, but a lot of the teen numbers sound the same and she mixes them up and skips some. And that’s all sesame street, I’ve never taught her anything above 10! She can recognize all the numbers 1-9 as well. I just got some foam bath letters and numbers and that was a hit.

The cracker thing is driving me crazy though. Since she’s discovered that she can choose what she eats and what she doesn’t she has been asserting that skill very often. I hear “no” a lot when I put food in front of her. I also hear “Cracker??” repeated about a hundred times a day. She eats graham crackers and triscuits so at least she’s not eating animal crackers all day or something, but still it’s just crackers. Granted still loves her yogurt and cheese, so I have that in there… and she does enjoy peanut butter and jam sandwiches. But she asks for crackers all day long! She pushes food away and asks for crackers. She would eat an entire package of crackers at once, if I let her (which I do not!). Fruits have gotten much more difficult. She’s going through a texture issues phase. She prods her food and if the texture is slimy or rubbery or anything unusual then she declares it “yucky” and won’t eat it. Canned fruit fits into that description apparently. She even took out the two tiny pieces of peach fruit she found in her peach yogurt and handed them over with disgust. She still loves dipping sauces though so I can get her to eat some meat if I provide a dip with it. She even ate ham the other day when I was making a meal for myself and she decided she wanted some. But it’s so tricky because if she’s not hungry enough or if she sees something else she would rather eat then the meat gets pushed onto the floor. I made the mistake of making her a ham sandwich when she was eating the ham – she picked it apart to eat all the bread, then discarded the ham and cheese. I know this is just a phase and she cycles rapidly between foods – one week she loved bananas, the next she didn’t like the texture. So I’m just trying to be patient, keep offering food, and not make a big deal of it. But damn it is annoying to cup up a bunch of food only to have her refuse to eat it! I don’t even bother buying stuff anymore because it just goes bad while she decides it’s not acceptable that week. And sadly my own picky food preferences do not help in this area – I make steamed broccoli and cauliflower for her (which she apparently still likes… for now), but I won’t touch it, ha. Another bizarre one was the salad I made. I like chilli on my salad with some nacho chips. I gave her a bunch of the veggies from the bag and no nacho chips with her chilli. The kid ate the beans, lettuce, and shredded carrots and left the ground beef of the chilli! What on earth?? But it’s good to know she’s eating shredded carrots, I can work with that.

But all in all life continues as normal and I just have to make sure we get in some outings each day so we’re not just sitting around bored. I have made extensive use of to-do lists this week, been cleaning and sorting the clutter in my house (nesting alert!), and even taken care of some things that I’ve been procrastinating for a long time. It feels good. Especially being able to juggle all of it on my own, I’m quite proud of myself. But then I remind myself that I’m only 1 week in, 3 more to go. I may be singing a different tune in a couple of weeks.