This Week in Mommyhood

I have not been good with these weekly mommyhood posts. I am hoping once school ends in two (!!!) weeks I'll be able to get back to all those things I have been neglecting. So much has happened in the last couple of weeks too. Cati is just an explosion of development and every day is more and more fun than the last. She is such a sponge right now and I just love being able to have conversations with her. Worst of all is the nagging guilt of not wanting to start all over again with Baby D. This is more a reflection of me than it is of the baby because I am seriously dreading the newborn stage and the potential of feeling the same way I did when Cati was a newborn. I feel like I have reached my groove as a mother and I am enjoying this parenting thing so much that I am afraid of how much things will change with a newborn. Suffice it to say that bittersweet has come to mean something new and different as a mother to a toddler expecting another baby.

Anyway, here are Cati's developments over the last two weeks:

Home. Nothing makes you feel like you really have made a home until your toddler knows your house as home and calls it such.

Hide-and-Seek Game. One day we were driving home and I gave Cati my gym ID to play with. All of a sudden and on her own initiative, she hid the ID under her thigh, said "donde esta?" (where is it?), and then grabbed the ID and said "ai esta!" (there it is). Now she loves hiding things and reproducing them. It's the funnest game to play.

Baby animals. Cati has always loved animals but now she is able to grasp the differences between adult animals and baby animals. If you ask her what a baby wau wau is she will respond with puppy and if you ask her what a baby gato is she will respond with kitten.

Numbers, Letters, and Colors, Oh My! Cati is becoming increasingly interested in numbers, colors, and letters. She understands the number two and what it means for there to be two things. She knows the colors black, white, purple, yellow, and orange but gets confused with green, red, and blue. O seems to be her favorite letter and is starting to understand the letters in Cati.

Viene and Trabajando. Cati loves to ask about different people in the family and likes to know if they are either coming or working.

Babe! This is just plain cute: whenever I'm on the phone with Alex, Cati yells out babe. She calls him daddy and papi but when it's me communicating with him, she knows he's called babe.

Order and Organization. It's amazing how much Cati pays attention to the things around her. She knows the place of things and likes things to be in there place. For example, I was doing laundry this past week and was sorting the clothes in the hallway. Cati saw the clothes out of the hamper, said "sucio," and then grabbed the clothes and put them back in the hamper.

Transportation. Cati is obsessed with buses and planes (avion). She points them out whenever we see them.

Holiday Spirit. I'm trying to get Cati to recognize the holiday things and so far she's got Santa and Snowman down. Can't wait for Christmas this year!

Healthy Mama. I will never worry about being dehydrated because Cati is very aware of my drinking habits. She will literally grab my water bottle, hand it to me, and say "Mama se" (mama thirsty) until I drink water.

Here are Baby D's developments over the past two weeks:

Unknown Sex. Still don't know the sex but the heart beat at my last check up was in the 150s.

Baby Bumpin'. The belly is definitely out. My belly button is out and there is no denying I'm pregnant. The good thing is that the only maternity clothes I've been wearing are tops because my jeans still fit. Woo hoo!

Rolling Round the Belly. The baby still moves a lot less than Cati but the movements have gotten more pronounced lately. It's so weird to feel another baby rolling around inside me.


Glucose Test. Ahh the dreaded glucose test. My doctor gave me the window to do the test and I figured it would be best to it before the Thanksgiving feasting. I am hoping I don't have to do the 3-hour test like I did with Cati. Too bad I went into the test having drank a glass of OJ and eaten pumpkin waffles for breakfast.

Name Game. Our boy name is picked out. That's the easy one because it's Alex's grandfather's name. I thought we had the girl name picked out until I found out Alex couldn't remember the spelling of the name and the pronunciation changes based on the spelling (huge hint here for those playing the name game). Spelling is huge for me, thus why Cati is Catarina and not Katarina (or Caterina or Katerina) so I was just a teensy bit upset Alex didn't remember after all the thought I put into the name. To be fair, he likes whatever name I like but it still bothered me to think that maybe the reason he forgot the spelling was because he didn't really like the name to begin with. As it stands, either I'm the only one that knows what we are naming this child if it's a girl or the baby is just going to be called Baby D.

And just for fun here are recent belly comparison pictures. I think, if anything, the belly is a little smaller this time around.

Baby D

Cati

I've done a better job of keeping track of things so I'm hoping I'm able to continue doing so over the next few weeks as things speed up and wind down.