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Koa has said this before, but he did it again today and I just had to share--mostly so I can use it against him in the future...
Sometimes when he seems to have rushed through the bathroom experience and I am not really sure he has spent an adequate amount of time to take care of business, I will ask him, "Are you sure you're finished? Do you need to go more?" and sometimes he responds with, "No, I full poop!"
Priceless!
"What is this?" "A strawberry." "Why?" "Because that's what God made it to be." "Why?" "Because HE said so!" Ah, that is so much more authoritative than, "Because I said so." and that is the conversation I just had with my sweet two year old!
As Zak said recently, "He's two and then he's a product of us, I think we can count on this stage lasting a little longer than the norm." I'm predicting his whole life....
Well, I guess there are some folks waiting to hear what the verdict is. Drum roll, please.... Our award goes to Regina (via Nick, I guess, but I'm not sure how that will work)! The prize is...you get to be a grandma again! You never would have guessed that prize, would you?
The recording was from a Fetal Doppler Heart Rate Monitor (which uses ultrasound, so Regina was technically right, as well) which was used to detect the heart beat at our 12 week appointment on Friday. However, we did get to see little BZ2 a few weeks ago on a traditional ultrasound machine when we had some concerns that things weren't going so well. At the time he/she just looked like a blob, or as the Dr. said, a gummy bear (weird!). The estimated due date is set for Halloween.
Koa went to the appointment with us and so far is intrigued by the fact that there is a baby, but he thinks the baby resides several inches higher than he/she actually does and he thinks there are two babies. Maybe it is actually an alphabet problem and he is just having trouble with his a's and o's.
So far I have had much more morning (all day) sickness with this one than I did with Koa. For those of you who don't know what a wimp I am when it comes to being sick....I hate throwing up more than anything in the world! I will do ANYTHING to avoid it--which probably makes everything much worse than it has to be, but that's all I know! So, I have consumed copious amounts of ginger, been faithful with drinking my Body Balance because it has lots of B vitamins and done a lot of deep breathing and concentrating on NOT throwing up. It seems to have worked so far. I also have figured out that somehow exercise makes everything much better--not for the present day, but the next day. If I exercise, the next day I will feel fine, but if I don't for two days in a row, by the end of the second day I can guarantee I will feel awful! I wonder if that is why I didn't get sick very often with Koa--because at that time I was exercising pretty much every week day, but when I think back, the couple of times I did get sick were on the weekends which I usually took off from exercising. I'm sure no one will believe my crazy theory since it is coming from a personal trainer and, of course, we think exercise and diet is the answer to everything!
In the midst of all the feeling awful I have had an amazing appetite for EVERYTHING (except hot dogs which make me want to hurl at the sight of them)! Everything sounds good and I am hungry (ravenous) at the drop of a hat--which will make me nauseous if I don't eat something immediately! Zak has been very sweet to humor me when I insist it is meal time IMMEDIATELY at whatever time of day! He has also learned not to mention any kind of food at all unless he is willing to eat it for the next meal. This has been pretty detrimental for Koa's eating schedule because we usually don't let him snack much between meals so that we are insured that he will eat well when it is meal time. However I feel pretty bad eating in front of him and not giving him anything to eat when he asks, so he and I have been grazing for the past eight weeks or so. The only problem with that is that I will still eat a meal when the time comes--he's not as likely to do that. We'll have to work on that a little now that the morning sickness is starting to subside.
I think the verdict is that we will wait to find out the gender of the BZ2 until he or she makes an appearance. The decision was up to Zak this time since we couldn't come to an agreement last time and I begged him to let us wait and he conceded. So, I told him this time it is completely up to him. I think he has decided we will wait again. For those of you who are in disagreement, you know to whom the lobbying should be directed!
Remember that game show back in the day? Well, we have a game for you. Click on the picture to see if you can guess what the sound is. A surprise will be awarded to the person with the first right answer!
Last Friday we went to the beach with some friends and while we were there Bodhi's mom noticed that he had some little red spots on his backside and his hands. We didn't know what it was, but I secretly hoped it was chicken pox so Koa would be exposed and get the pox so we would be done with that childhood illness. Fast forward to Monday night--I took Koa out of the bath and noticed that he had little red spots on his backside. So, I looked at his hands and they looked exactly the same as Bodhi's. I called Kellie and she told me Bodhi had hand-foot-mouth disease. I looked the symptoms and recommendations up on the Internet and gave Koa some colloidal silver and put him to bed. I emailed all the kids (or their moms, rather) in his Bible school class to let them know they had been exposed and let Stroller Strides know I would not be teaching class the next day and made plans to stay home and nurse a sick little boy back to health.
The next morning when he woke up I checked him out and found that the spots had faded. I gave him some more colloidal silver and increased his daily Body Balance. By last night the spots had gone away completely except for a few on his bum. So far he hasn't gotten any sores in his mouth or anything. He slept a lot yesterday. He actually asked to go to sleep at like 10 and then slept right through lunch until about 2:30. I'm sure he probably needed it. He had woken up a couple of times the night before and I didn't get much sleep, so I took advantage of it and took a nap with him. Not a bad day of quarantine! I think we are going to pretty much stay away from folks today, too, since we don't know for sure that I don't have it, yet, and the spots on his bum aren't totally gone. From what I understand it is much worse for adults to get it, so I'd rather keep our sickness to ourselves instead of passing it on to anyone. Once again, I am happy to see that his little immune system is doing what it is supposed to be doing.
Since we don't really stay home a lot on a regular basis we got to do more playing at home than we normally do and I got to see how Koa's little mind has been changing in regards to some of his toys. He has this great set of stacking/nesting blocks that are in graduated sizes. He's never been able to figure out the relationship in size when it comes to stacking them. He always stacks them completely out of order--which doesn't really work so well--and then he immediately knocks them down saying, "Crash!" Yesterday he got them out and stacked the top five in perfect order. He also wanted to show off his creation and kept calling us to come look at it and would very carefully adjust the top ones so as not to knock it over...until he was ready. Then he carefully knocked it down and said, "Crash, crash, crash!" This morning he stacked almost the whole thing by himself and it was very cool to watch him figure out the size and experiment with which one should go next. They all have numbers on them and he knows that somehow that is important to the order, but he doesn't know his numbers in order, yet, so it doesn't really help him with the reasoning.
His sentences just keep getting longer and longer. The other day he was talking to my sister on the phone and when she asked him what he was doing he told her, "I found gecko in a tree, right there!" He's also started praying by himself using words now. So, when he plays communion he mentions "Daddy, Mama, Wes and Jess. Amen." When we pray together at meals or bed time he is still stubborn about praying by himself and will say, "Daddy's turn." or "Mama's turn." or both. So, I have started asking him to insert things he is thankful for while I say the prayer. He always wants to thank God for all of his friends. It's pretty cute. If he forgets one during the prayer he will just shout it out a name later during the meal.
Speaking of friends, he has imaginary friends, too. Well, they are real friends, but he talks to them when we are at home alone. He talks most often to his friend, Sophia. He is always telling her, "Phia, come! Phia, come!" Apparently she doesn't listen to him any better than she listens to her mama because I don't think I have ever heard him say anything else to her. I did hear him having conversations with Bodhi and Hunter the other day. I can't be sure what they were talking about, though.
I think this phase may be past, but he has recently been very fascinated by figuring out who is a boy and who is a girl. He likes to tell us that he is a boy and specifically a big boy. He likes for us to quiz him on everyone else he knows so he can decide if they are a boy or girl. This morning we heard a rooster outside and he told me the rooster is the daddy. I have no idea where he got that!
He has new songs he likes to sing and they have words now. He likes to sing, "Twinkle Star", "Zipita" (Zipity-do-da), "BIBLE!" and "Shine" (This Little Light of Mine) as of late. When we sing to him he will cue us with a word from the next verse if we stop short.
As far as his sign language goes, he still uses it and quizzing him with words and letters is a good way to pass the time if we are somewhere that he is getting bored. He knows most of his letters pretty well. He still gets confused on some of the ones that look very similar, but he probably knows 90% of them. He's started trying to guess the next one based on the order, but he's not so good at the order, yet. One way that his signing has been really useful lately is if he is trying to say something that I don't understand, even if he doesn't know the sign for the word he is saying he will give me a sign that is somehow related to help me figure it out. For instance, the other day he was saying, "Roar!" but I didn't understand it. After he tried saying the word a few times he finally gave me the sign for "lion" to help me understand. I said, "Oh, 'Roar!'" and he said, "Yeah!"
If you don't like bathroom humor, you might want to stop here, but I thought this was pretty funny. Yesterday after he went to the potty, he stood up and looked at his deposit and told me it looked like a lizard! Ah, his imagination knows no bounds already!
As you can tell we've been having lots of fun together. He's definitely a two year old and can be a bit volatile at times, but for the most part as long as he gets enough sleep we don't have too many irritating or frustrating moments. I am also very thankful that his illness didn't last any longer than it did. I know that would have been rough on both of us! What a blessing!
Yesterday on his way to work Zak received the good news that he was awarded a scholarship for fifty percent of tuition to Multnomah--the largest scholarship they offer! That is good news for school finances, but it is also good news because Zak has to present a justification to the Navy for why he should get out early to go to school instead of waiting until the following year. We are hoping that this will be a convincing element to that argument. It's not every day one gets a scholarship like that! Within the next day or two, Zak will submit the package requesting an early release. And then we wait...
Speaking of waiting, if you've been waiting for pictures of our camping weekend at Bellows you will find a photo album on the left or you can click here.
