Super Eater

As I mentioned in my last post, daycare has turned Joseph into a crazy hungry boy whenever he's with us. His teachers tell us he eats at the mealtimes, but I think he's either not eating very much, or just being really slow. And at daycare, when mealtime is over, it's over, which is totally understandable.

So we've started to learn that even though they serve breakfast, it's better for everyone if we feed him "1st breakfast" before heading out. Generally a piece of fruit, scrambled egg, cereal bar, something to have him walking into school with food in his tummy = a slightly happier little boy. Slightly.

In the same light, whenever we pick him up, it's hours after afternoon snack (we usually can't make it to pick him up before 5:30pm) and he's asking to eat the moment we get into the car. For example, Monday I picked him up at 6 and immediately went to the grocery store to get things for this week. While at the store, he ate an entire banana, handful of grapes, package of fruit snacks, and then still ate his mac & cheese, half a biscuit and a few bites of grilled chicken an hour later at home! 

Tonight was no exception. I picked him up at 5:30 and he was asking to eat. Joe was going to be working late, and I didn't really want to make dinner twice, so I took the easy way out and we stopped at Steak N Shake. I ordered him a kid's grilled cheese, mandarin oranges and a strawberry milkshake. We discovered that he LOVES things like shakes when I ordered a virgin strawberry daquiri last weekend and Joseph drank more than half of my drink. He couldn't get enough!

True to recent form, once his dinner arrived, he sat down and steadily plowed through half of the sandwich, before turning to the oranges. He was so sweet, trying his hardest to scoop up the oranges with a spoon and then a fork. He's getting a lot better at keeping the spoon upright on its way into his mouth and only dropped  1. After polishing off the whole bowl of oranges, he turned back to the sandwich, which he finished! And then asked for more. Are you kidding me? I reminded him about his shake, which he happily started chugging. 

The last bit of sandwich, and a protest about having his picture taken. Usually he hams it up for the camera, but not tonight.

He decided it was much more fun to suck the melted shake off the straw than drink through it, and was having so much fun I had to video a bit of the experience.

You would think all that food would be enough to fill up a two year old. Not this kid. After playing outside with bubbles for a bit, he was asking to eat again, and finished a cereal bar, slice of red pepper and a few more pieces of chicken! He's learning how to stall when he doesn't want to go take his nightly bath and will continue eating, so it's hard to tell if he's really still hungry or not. Probably not, but since he's never eaten this well, we aren't complaining. Except now I have visions of what life might actually be like with a teenage boy in the house....at least that's a long way off!

Well Hello Again!

Turns out, when I take on a full time job, life gets crazy! Now that it's the last week of March, I have a lot to reflect on and update. Back when I started working, Gary and my mom started off watching Joseph for the first week and a half. While it was great for Joseph (and us), we quickly realized that it's not fair to ask grandparents to spend full weeks watching a toddler who's usually going full steam ahead all the time. And due to scheduling, we spent the first three weekends of March driving to and from Columbia and St. Louis. It quickly started to wear on us as well.

I had spent a bit of time looking at day care centers when I knew this job was a possibility, so we went ahead and enrolled him for two days a week, to supplement his already scheduled Friday program. Gary has been watching him the other two days a week, which Joseph loves. At first he really enjoyed the new day care, but I think all of the time spent with fun grandparents really spoiled him, and now every trip to "school" results in some serious separation problems. Luckily he quickly gets over it, but it's still hard to deal with every other day. And I'm still working on trying to be a full time working mom. Meal planning, house keeping, laundry and all of the other daily chores is definitely way more difficult to schedule and stay on top of now, besides trying to stay up with making my lunch for work, exercising and getting enough sleep. While this arrangement works out ok for the short term, I'm looking forward to being able to stay home again and get back into my normal routine (at least what will be normal for a few more months, before everything gets crazy again with a  newborn in the mix!).

A few weeks ago, Joe put Joseph's play house together, and Joseph loves playing in it. Actually, being outside is Joseph's favorite thing, more so than playing trains! I snapped these pictures one afternoon when it was a little drizzly and chilly, and you can see Joseph decided he needed to wear his hat. He got this last year for Christmas, and when we pulled it out in the fall to see if it still fit this year, he saw it and wouldn't let us put it away. At least once a week he'll grab this hat and pull it on, and insist on wearing it around. And no, it doesn't really fit anymore, but try telling that to him!

His house has a mail slot, which is a constant source of fun. Typically he'll gather sticks from the yard and use those as his pieces of mail, which is what he's doing below.

This past Thursday I had the chance to serve as a model for a women's clinic that was training new ultrasound techs. A free ultrasound? There was no way I could pass that opportunity up! Because there were 3 techs training, plus the instructor, I spent a little over an hour getting to watch the baby. While I was there, the baby waved, yawned, and flipped around a number of times. We didn't get a chance to find out the gender, but all the techs had to take a variety of measurements and confirmed that I am measuring about a week ahead of what we originally thought. I'll be 18 weeks on Friday, and the baby's new due date is August 31!

Due to my health insurance/maternity coverage issues, my next doctor's appointment isn't for another week. I'm sure at that appointment we'll get the instruction to set the big anatomy ultrasound. So far I'm still feeling great, and getting better about exercising before going to work, since waiting until after work just wasn't cutting it. I've also been hitting up the area consignment sales, this time looking for clothes for Joseph and me. I forgot how expensive maternity clothes are when new and not on sale! And since this pregnancy has me getting bigger at exactly the opposite time of year as when I was pregnant with Joseph, I really need a lot of new summer clothes. So far, I've been really lucky at the consignment sales, finding two skirts, two pairs of capri pants, two pairs of shorts and two shirts, with the average price per item at $5-8. 

Today was the first day I opted to wear one of the pairs of capri pants to work, and while they are much more comfortable, I'd forgotten how easily maternity pants like to slip down! It'll be an adjustment getting used to wearing maternity clothes again, but I'm glad that I'm still able to wear normal clothes and supplement with the maternity stuff now.

We spent this past weekend at home, the first time since February, which was awesome. Saturday we walked up to First Watch for breakfast, then when we got home we started cleaning up the yard, porch and patio. Joseph was too cute picking up sticks from the yard and trying to copy Joe, breaking the "big" ones on his leg like daddy! He's really turned into quite the copycat. We also outlined the section of yard that I'll be working on landscaping in the coming weeks, including a special section just for Joseph. Joe picked up a RAV-load full of mulch, which covered a little over half of Joseph's area, and we dragged the playhouse out to its new spot in the yard. With spring arriving about a month early this year, I have to keep reminding myself that it's way too early to start planting, which is good since our next few weekends are already full. When Joseph got up from his nap, he helped us spread the mulch, dig for worms and generally had a blast. I can't wait to watch the area evolve into a fun special place for him!

Sunday was Joe and my 6 year anniversary. Hard to believe it's been 6 years already! After church, Joseph went to Nana and Papa's house so Joe and I could spend the afternoon together. We headed out to the Legends to do some shopping, grab a late lunch and watch The Hunger Games movie, since we were both excited about the movie. The weather was beautiful for wandering around outside, and Joseph had a blast with his grandparents. He's starting to realize that grandparents' houses are way more fun than ours, and whenever we are leaving one, he'll try to tell us that "Nana's house is Jo-Jo's house". Sorry kiddo, that's just not the case!

 So that's what's been going on around the Jeppson house this month. Sunday is the annual KC Track Club Brew to Brew, a 40+ mile relay race from the Boulevard Brewery in KC to the Free State Brewery in Lawrence. I'm running the first 4 mile leg and then acting as one of the team sober drivers for the rest of the day. Needless to say, it'll be an experience for me to be there and not be drinking with everyone. I'm still looking forward to a day of beautiful weather, and hanging out with a bunch of good friends.

Baby Bump

I realize I haven't announced it on the blog, but since everyone who reads the blog knows already, it didn't seem like too big of a deal, but baby Jeppson #2 is on the way! I'm approximately 14 weeks pregnant now, with a due date of early September (no ultrasound yet = no official date, but we're going with Sept. 8th).

I enjoyed being pregnant with Joseph, but definitely took the "eating for two" thing to the extremes, as I ended up gaining over 50 pounds with him! Eek! Luckily, after months of hard work and determination, and I lost it all, and then managed to lose another 10 or so over the past year. I was determined to start this pregnancy healthier, with a different mindset for my second time around. Luckily, Joseph keeps me busy enough that this time I didn't really have the time to sit and focus on being newly pregnant. Other than being more tired than normal, I didn't have any bad first trimester issues - not a bout of morning sickness or anything! So it hasn't felt real until, quite honestly, this past week.

I've also decided to be much better about monitoring my food intake and exercise amounts with this pregnancy. Whereas with Joseph I never stepped on the scale, save for the requisite trips to the doctor, this time I'm monitoring my weight and calorie intake daily so I can keep tabs on whether I'm overeating or staying right on track. Not to say I'm dieting, because that's definitely not the case, but I certainly don't need to be eating crazy amounts of food and giving in to every "craving" for sugar. At this point, I'm up about 4 lbs, which is right on target, especially considering I didn't have any morning sickness. In the end, I'm really hoping to stay under 35 lbs gained total, but if it doesn't happen, at least I know I'll have tried harder this time around.

Back to things starting to seem real. All of my clothes still fit, although this week the waist of some of my pants are starting to get snug. And for good reason - Joe and I agree that I'm definitely starting to show a definite little bump! I mean, it's not that noticeable unless I'm wearing a shirt that hangs close to my stomach, but it's there and growing. I'm hoping to be able to stay in my regular clothes for at least a few more weeks, especially since now I have to wear dress pants to work and really don't want to invest in new clothes for a temporary job! We took pictures tonight to document, but for some reason the card reader in my computer won't take the SD card, so I'm kinda out of luck for posting them right now. As soon as we figure out what's going on, though, we will!

What a week!

Wow, what a difference a week can make! Ever since starting my stay-at-home mom job, I go through phases where I wonder if financially it makes the most sense. In all reality, with my law license and experience, the answer is, unequivocally no. However, we're blessed to be able to make ends meet on just Joe's salary and I don't think there's any question that our family/home life is greatly improved having one of us at home.

Still, I get restless every so often and I'd start looking at job postings, thinking, well, maybe.... Then realize that we still weren't comfortable with sending Joseph to daycare at a young age. Now that Joseph's talking a ton(!) and is becoming quite a social little boy, we've entered the stage of life where maybe being around more kids more often in a structured environment wouldn't be a bad idea. If it came to that.

So last week I once again started looking at job postings, and found a few for short term contract attorney jobs - lasting 1-3 months. These jobs are typically 40 hrs, no overtime, no responsibility, and not exciting, but they pay better than a basic attorney job and leaps and bounds above retail, basic administrative work, etc. Joe and I discussed it and agreed maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to apply and see what happens. After all, we are still clawing our way back out of the financial hole we dug when our low budget bathroom remodel last winter turned into a massive home remodel. This type of a job should, in theory, give us that last little push of double income to pay off the credit cards and start rebuilding our savings.

I dug up my last resume, spent some time updating it and emailed it to the two different job contacts Wednesday night. At 9am Thursday morning, my phone rang. One company wanted me to interview that same day! The timing wasn't going to work out, so I scheduled the interview for Friday when Joseph could nap at Joe's office. Later that afternoon, the second company emailed to set an interview for Monday. I was really surprised at how fast everything was moving! Friday's interview went well, and they would call on Monday if I had been selected for a second interview. So Monday I headed off to the other interview, and sure enough, got a call from the first company to interview again on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday's second round interview went well enough that they called back a few hours later and said I'd been offered the job, and needed to start the following day! Mind you, I went from not even thinking about going back to work to employed in less than one week! Crazy!

Luckily we had spent the weekend discussing these options with Gary and my mom, to see if we could line them up to watch Joseph while we learned if I was in fact going to be working and figured everything out. The job I took says that it may only last through the end of March, but there's a good chance it'll run through April. Gary watched Joseph this week, and tomorrow I'm headed toward St. Louis when Joseph will spend this week with my parents. Assuming things go well at work this week, I have a daycare lined up to watch Joseph 2+ days a week, he'll stay in his Friday Kids Day Out program (that he's been enrolled in since August) and Gary will probably watch him the other 2 days a week.

In the end, it's not enjoyable work, but it's a job that should help us get back on the right track financially. And I know that I'm going to really appreciate being able to stay home full time! It's already been stressful trying to get Joseph and me ready in the morning and then figure out dinner when I get home. I definitely haven't figured that out yet, but will be working on it this week!