Amy J. Bennett

I’m still battling this cold a little bit. Emma has some sort of diarrhea thingy going on. I promise her poo was rosy pink yesterday afternoon. It was THE weirdest thing I’ve seen come out of her yet. She won’t eat much either. I mean, she gets by with a couple bites at each meal and those were coaxed into getting. Not sure what is going on there. She doesn’t have a fever so I haven’t gotten that concerned yet.

Yesterday I ended up going into work and Emma stayed with Scott’s grandmother. She didn’t have a nap until I got her home and she fell asleep about 7. That is the longest she has ever gone without a nap. She slept until about 8:15 and didn’t go to sleep for the night until about 11. She can’t do that often, I was about to knock out myself. She is kinda crabby today on and off. MIL is coming to get her when she gets off at 1 so I’m hoping she falls asleep on the way to her house and gets a good nap in.

We are going to the beach on Monday. It keeps slipping my mind that we’re going. It’s like, oh, we’re going to the beach. For some reason it’s not a big deal to me. I guess I should be excited for Emma. MIL is going to take Emma with her when they go on Sunday. I was all for that so I don’t have to be in the car with Emma on a 3 1/2 hour drive. No thanks.

My mom and dad bought a house in Maryland where my side of the family lives. Dad is up there now remodeling it. Seems like he has gotten a lot done. We will probably go up and stay for a week in September. I am definitely not looking forward to that drive with Emma then. We are planning to get a DVD player for the car so she can watch the Wiggles when she gets cranky. I hope that does the trick.

I have been sick the past couple of days. Some kind of sinus thing. The house needs cleaned but its hard when you can hardly go 5 minutes without blowing your nose.

Emma has been a MawMaw’s (MIL) girl the past couple of days. The only thing she can say after leaving is MawMaw?, MawMaw?, PawPaw?, MawMaw? We try to explain they are back at home but she keeps on. She only wants her to hold her when she is around though. MawMaw of course is soaking it up!

Busy, busy working.

I just needed to get in here that Emma calls me Mamy. Well, sometimes it comes out Momma or Mommy, but I get Mamy alot. I think she gets confused when people sometimes call me Mommy in front of her and sometimes Amy. I need to get it on film cause it’s just one of those things we’ll always talk about…

The weekend went pretty good. Emma did not go to sleep until late Friday and then was up at 5:15 on Saturday. Without her paci, she couldn’t calm herself down but finally I got her back to sleep by walking her up and down the hall. I tihnk we managed to get another hour or so of sleep. But I was like a walking zombie. We went Mom’s shop and I half slept in her comfy chair for about an hour. I did feel a little rested after we left. Saturday afternoon I somehow managed to empty 5 more boxes and organizing my new shelf in my closet. We now only have 2 boxes left and we almost of a clean 3rd bedroom. I keep putting off planning the nursery until it is clean in there. Saturday evening I cooked dinner and had Scott’s family over to eat for my birthday dinner. I didn’t plan it as such but that’s what it turned out to be. Sunday I went to church and then stayed over at Mom’s all day since Scott was working. She cooked me steak dinner for my birthday and then let me take a really long nap!! It was heavenly. Oh and she baked me my favorite chocolate cake she makes. The bad part of yesterday is that Emma didn’t nap while we were at Mom’s so at 6 when I went home, she fell asleep and didn’t wake up until 8. So that meant she did NOT want to go to sleep last night. I think she finally fell asleep a little after 11. She did sleep in until after 7 this morning. She did ask for her paci though. Poor thing.

I am trying to think of the new things Emma has been doing. She will say mess when she drops food or something. Well, a lot of times it is uh-oh. She’s gotten really good at giving kisses. Some of her smacking is very loud! She knows up, down, out, off. She understands I think all of what I say. This morning I was opening mail and told her to go put the magnet on the refrigerator and she did it. She knows where her dirty clothes, diapers, general trash all go. We are working on counting, but everything is two. MIL says 1-2-3-Jump! Emma says 2-2-Jump!
We are having difficulty at our house with her high chair. We have it pulled up to the table without the tray. She will sit in it when there are other people here or any other high chair at someone else’s house pretty as you please and the minute Scott and I have her by ourselves she cries big crocodile tears when we try to put her in there. She acts like it is a punishment. I don’t know what we are going to do. Sometimes we have even put her at a regular chair and she won’t sit there, we have to put her in our lap. I don’t know what the deal is.

The baby has been moving LOTS lately. I feel her at small intervals throughout the day. I definitely don’t remember Emma moving around this much. I am definitely full time in maternity clothes but I have gained only about 5 lbs. It seems like more.

Last evening at my friend MD’s house went really well. I didn’t stay as long as they were hoping I don’t think, but I don’t feel too tired today and that’s what counts. We ate pizza and started watching American Wedding. We watched the unrated version and maybe I’m getting old or just…I don’t know…but I could hardly stand it. If they could have cut Stiffler out of it, it might have been bearable but he was just plain vulgar. Anyway, I also took over my maternity bridesmaid dress I had bought off of ebay. I had a big to-do about that because I had gotten the girl to come down on her Buy It Now price and she only charged me 3.85 for shipping, so I was psyched about that but then it took over a month for it to come in the mail. Turns out it was in our apartment office’s back room sitting there. They never gave me a notice that I had gotten it. THEN, I open it and I was very disappointed. The real bridesmaid’s dresses are a strapless satin black with a very very small train–oh, it also has a white strip of satin at the top and then splits open at the back to reveal more white satin. This dress was basically a strapless spandex dress that barely came down to my ankles. I thought the black looked faded to me and in my head I thought I had to start all over again. But I tried it on yesterday and it didn’t look half bad. Then last night MD tried on her sister’s bridesmaid’s dress and I tried on that one and then I tied one of MD’s white satin ribbons right below my chest and it looked so cute together! The blacks didn’t look bad beside one another and the ribbon made it look similar, but not the same. Like, you could tell I was wearing a maternity dress but it looked nice. I was really excited because I had only spent a third on that dress as I would have on a regular maternity dress with alterations. And this one is strapless like theirs and I can definitely wear this dress on other occassions while I’m pregnant. Cool.

So, on the pacifier front, Emma hasn’t asked for it again. Scott said last night she rocked with him without it. He did have to put her down in her crib a few times before she would stay and not wake up but she spent the rest of the night in there and when I went and got her at 6:30, she only cried until I got her out. She briefly looked on the floor where her paci usually is, but she didn’t say anything about it and quit crying. We laid in my bed for a few minutes and she babbled a little but didn’t go back to sleep. It was actually very sweet listening to her babble and such. She was in a really good mood all morning until I left actually. Then I took her to Scott’s grandmother’s (I came into the office today) and she didn’t ask for it then either. I’m hoping nap time goes ok with MawMaw today. I will either feel really bad if she cries a lot for it or really mad/disappointed if she breaks down and gives her a paci (if she finds them in the bottom of her bag) or just happy if it goes smoothly. Emma is a smart little girl. I think she realizes when we told her they were all gone that they really were and that’s probably why she cried like she did yesterday. Man, that broke my heart, I couldn’t take that again.

Time is flying by. I can’t even remember what happened in the past week. I left off at July 4th. We went with D&D to see the fireworks. The girls had a blast and loved the fireworks. They didn’t even mind the sound even though we were very close to where they were shooting them off at. Tuesday D had her baby. 7lb10oz, 19 in. She will be E. Now there is D&D, C, L, and E. She is a beautiful baby. She looks like the daddy’s side of the family, same as C&L. I took Emma over there Tuesday and she was fine when I held the baby. My niece who is 9 months old screams when my sister in law holds her friend’s new baby.

Let’s see…Scott’s birthday was yesterday. Scott and I went out to eat and then we had the family over for desserts. Scott is not a big cake eater, so we had brownies, pie and ice cream. His dad is going to make him dinner tonight.

Today we had our second big ultrasound since last time she didn’t see everything she needed to. The baby did not want to participate again and she got only one small shot of what she thought looked like a girl. She did show us 3D and 4D and that was really cool. I have half an album of just ultrasound pictures since she has given us so many. This was our 5th ultrasound! The baby looks like she might have the same nose as Emma. I know it’s hard to tell now, but it does look the same! She is folded in half with her butt at my bladder. She opened and closed her mouth and was leaning her head on her shin. I am getting really excited! I just have no idea what to do in that nursery!

I started wearing maternity clothes in the past week or so. All of the sudden, I have ballooned. It is amazing how fast it has happened. Sometimes after I eat I feel like my skin is literally stretching. I’m surprised no stretch marks have shown up yet.

Also “in the news” today, we took away Emma’s pacifier. I said 18 months would be the absolute cut off but now she is almost 20 and still gets it. I mentioned it to Scott that we needed to start on that soon and today he put them up and said no more. When she finally got too tired at 3:30, she went looking for her paci in her bag and I told her it was all gone and she started crying. It about broke my heart. And now she woke up only 45 minutes into her nap. I can see some cranky days ahead of us. Today was really not a good day to do this as I am going to my friend’s house tonight for pizza and movies and Emma prefers when I’m around at bed time. Oh well, I guess he just sticks a paci in there if it gets too bad.

The thing tonight is for my friend MF who is getting married. Her bachelorette party is at the beach this weekend and I’m not going so MD (my other friend getting married) is having some people over at her house tonight for everyone in town since we all are not going to the beach. I was happy to be able to participate in something this weekend.

Happy 4th of July! We spent all morning and early afternoon at the church. They had a picnic and games and stuff right after church. Emma came home and immediately went down for a nap. If she naps well (and probably even if she doesn’t) we are going with D&D and the twins to see the fireworks later tonight. It will be a late night for the kids but I was thinking this is the last night for a while that we will all be able to go out. D has her c-section on Tuesday, so we will have 4 under 2 to handle and then 5 when ours gets here! Woah! That is unbelievable!

I’m relaxing while Emma is sleeping. I cleaned up yesterday so today I am enjoying ebaying and reading a romance novel while she sleeps. I’m so happy I don’t have to work tomorrow and Scott is off too! We will probably do some things around the house. I would like to get the third bedroom a little cleaned out and organized. If I could decide on a paint color for the bathroom, we could do that too. It is so odd that I can think of nothing for that bathroom. Usually I am trying to narrow down the decision but not this time. I’m clueless. Scott mentioned wanting to paint the living room although I am fine with it for now. I have no idea what to paint it either. I guess we have plenty of time.

We have had a busy but pretty good week. It is no surprise we have spent a lot of time with family. The good news is they have all come over here. We haven’t been to one of our parents house all week. We’ve cooked every night and had one of the families over a couple times. I’m cooking a roast today and having my family over. It’s really nice to be able to have them over and have them enjoy being at the house. Our last house here was just so small, everyone just acted kind of awkward when they were there. Now, they’ll take Emma back to her room and play or just sit here at the computer and mess around or watch tv. It’s been great.

Wednesday was our big dr’s appt. Unfortunately the baby would not cooperate and was sitting on her hiney on my bladder so the tech couldn’t get all the stuff she wanted to see including the gender. So we go back in two weeks to complete the ultrasound. Everything she saw looked really good which I’m ecstatic about.

We found out that Scott works a different schedule up here. They go in and get off an hour earlier. It stinks when he has to work nights and goes in earlier but it’s nice when he works days and he gets home an hour earlier. Today is his first day in our county and guess what? He had to go back to Columbia to get his car worked on. I just thought that was too funny. Anyway, he got back and was stopping cars around here. Mom said he stopped a car in her business park and came into her shop to use the bathroom afterwards. And he was going to stop by here but he had to go work a wreck. It’s just cool that we’re all in the same town.

Emma is a hoot. She has now started waving to almost every child she sees out. And she can’t wave. She has to keep bugging them to turn back around and save again after they’ve already done so. She gets so excited to be around other kids. I think I really want to get her into D’s church’s mother’s monring out this fall. She also has started crossing her arms and just standing there. It’s the funniest thing to see her. She’s really trying to copy a lot of words.

I guess I should go work on something else a little more constructive while she’s napping…