Poor, persecuted apple

Jocelyn likes to snatch utensils from the drawer occasionally, and we're generally okay with that. It was clearly not okay, though, when she came running around the corner from the kitchen into the family room on Sunday holding five steak knives; it was even less okay when she proceeded to stab the water polo ball with them (thankfully, not hard enough to do any harm). That's when I realized, "Hmm, those knives ought to go in one of the drawers that she can't open." However, I didn't move the butter knives, thinking they couldn't do too much harm.


This is what I found this morning about twenty minutes after I gave Jocelyn her apple. Considering the amount of force it must have taken to stab the apple this deeply ... and then pondering how much bodily harm that could have done if she had stabbed someone instead of something ... I'm thinking that we may want to make butter knives inaccessible as well for now. I really don't want to be posting a picture similar to the one above this spring with the knife sticking out of Robbie instead of an apple.

It's a boy ... and other good news!

We had our ultrasound this morning and found out that we'll be welcoming Robert Stone into our lives in April. Yep, it's a boy! We're praising God that all is well with me and Robert, especially:

• that my iron counts are right where they should be (which is a concern since I was severely anemic throughout my whole pregnancy with Jocelyn).
• that my blood sugar levels and blood pressure are both right where they should be (which is a concern since being on prednisone during pregnancy can cause high blood pressure and high blood sugar).
• that Robert's head and facial bones and tissues are all properly developed (which is a concern because the only documented - albeit rare - side effect of prednisone in pregnancy is craniofacial deformities and because my nephew was born with a cleft lip and cleft palate, so we had two strikes against us for that).
• that I've actually lost a couple pounds since my last check-up a month ago, when they restricted my carb intake since the prednisone was keeping me from metabolizing those good ole carbs. That puts me only slightly above where I should be weight-wise at this point, and the doc isn't concerned about that at all. So, yes, I still have to restrict carbs, but what I've been doing is working so we don't need to change anything else - YAY!
• that everything else - his heart, his little bones, his size, and so on - is looking perfect!
• that, as of today, I'm down to 10mg of prednisone for my arthritis, which is exactly where my docs want me, and my joint pain is minimal. When I dropped to 15mg, my joints were not happy, to say the least, so we didn't think I'd be able to get to or stay on 10mg ... so far, so good!

We are so thankful for this little boy! I'll post some of the ultrasound pictures soon, but I was so excited that I wanted to share the news right away!

We're also pleased that we don't need to paint, since the office/nursery is already a dark green color that'll be perfect for a little boy. Almost every large item we got for Jocelyn, like the stroller and car seats, weren't gender-specific, nor was her crib bedding, so we're all set there. Clothes are another story, though, since pretty much everything we had for her screams "GIRL!," either with lots of pink or purple or with embellishments like ruffles or bows. God provided above and beyond our needs for Jocelyn, though, through generous friends and family, so we are trusting that He will meet our needs once again!

Jocelyn's big girl bed

We were blessed to receive several pieces of nice furniture from my grandmother when we visited her a few weeks ago, and among those pieces were a set of twin beds for Jocelyn's room. Since her room is big enough to accommodate her nursery furniture and one twin bed, we decided to go ahead and move one of the beds into her room to a) get it out of the garage and b) get her used to it. She wasn't going to start sleeping in the big bed until sometime in December or January. Well, she had other plans for naptime today...



I was not emotionally ready for this, and I felt like I would have more time to prepare myself for the baby-to-big-girl step of moving from the crib to the bed! Yes, there were tears! (From me, not from her!) She insisted on every stuffed animal joining her in bed before she went to sleep and then told us "buh-bye," which is her way of saying "good night" at naptime and bedtime. She cried for a little while, but no more than she usually cries when we leave the room (about five minutes or so), and she never tried to get out of bed. We were ambivalent about putting a side rail on the bed, mostly because she plays on our bed and is good about understanding the sides of it and getting on and off of it safely; we weren't planning to make the final decision for a few weeks because we didn't think she would be moving quite yet! I guess she made the decision for us!

(As a final note, I do realize that it might not continue to be smooth sailing in the big girl bed from here on, so we're prepared to be flexible. But I never expected it to go this smoothly for the first nap in it!)

Halloween!

Every Halloween our church has a fantastic festival. We used to volunteer at it before we had Jocelyn, and this was the first year that she could really enjoy it! Jocelyn was a bumblebee, I was a crayon (yet again ... I think this makes five years of that costume), and Lee was, well, a daddy (not so original, but he was a great one!).

Here are my two favorite people:

Here are me and my sweet little girl (a little blurry!):

Note that she insisted upon wearing the pink crocs. The girl throws massive fits if I try to dress her in an outfit that has no pink in it!

Shooting some hoops with Daddy's help:

Putting pings on the rhino:

Loving the slide:

Yes, she did climb up and go down all by herself. Lee intended to go with her, but he set her down the first time and before he could climb onto the climbing area, Jocelyn had taken off and a couple kids had passed him. She did just fine on her own! I think some parents were questioning our decision to let her go on her own, but they just don't know our strong-willed, independent little girl! (I have NO idea where she gets it from!)

At the bottom:

Riding the pony (sorry these pics are bad but flash photography spooks the ponies so it wasn't allowed):



This is a bad pic, but I like something about the blurry-ness ...

Crawling through the play area:

Playing in the balls (note the stinger on the back of her costume):

Doing the bean bag toss (or, in Jocelyn style, the bean bag crawl-onto-the-game-and-place-in-the-hole game):

Trying to decide if it's worth trying to throw it or just crawling up to the hole:

Nah, I'll just walk around to the slide and drop it in!

For this game, she was catching butterlies with the nets ... and she actually caught a couple, but she mostly just watched the machine shoot them into the air!

Note the pumpkin in her hand (that Gammie, Shannon's mom, sent her last Halloween). She didn't trust us to hold her candy while she crawled through the tubes.


Time to go (note the stinger again!) ...

And the last shot of the night ... my two favorite people again!

I think one of the funniest things was when Jocelyn realized that all the brown bags at each game were filled with candy. I don't think she even understood what was in the shiny wrapper since she never has candy, but she caught on that it was something worth having. After two games, she determined that she would try to just bypass the game and go straight for the shiny stuff in the bag. Like mother, like daughter, I guess! (I, too, am known for my fondness of shiny things!)

Where we were this morning ...

... yep, at the church playground! These pictures are actually from two weeks ago, but I haven't posted them and I haven't downloaded today's pics, so they'll have to do! :) Today we were the only ones there - maybe it was a little too cold for the other kiddos, or perhaps they've caught one of the bugs floating around? - but Jocelyn thought it was a special gift to have all three playgrounds to herself. I did get some amazing pictures, though, because the overcast sky made for good lighting and because I wasn't chatting with any other moms ... so be expecting a post with those soon!

And now a bunch of cute pictures on the swing a couple weeks ago. I loved her facial expressions and couldn't narrow it down to just one, so here are several: