So almost everything is still in the pots hahaha.  I hate planting so much.  I hate digging the bed.  The soil we have is crap, it’s rock hard when it’s dry.  I have no idea what the previous owners did to it.  I planted the big stuff, the rhododendrons, azaleas and hostas.  The flowers are still in their pots.  And yet, I keep on buying plants.  My plants for the shade garden in the front yard has doubled in size and now takes up half the front yard (or at least it will once I plant them).  It’s too hard for us to grow grass there anyway, so the rest of that side will be covered with some sort of ground cover.  Plus, PB decided that we should get our plum tree pruned, so I have to hold off on planting the shade garden since all the tree limbs will be crashing down on it.

Our front yard is divided by our front walkway.  I love the wild look of a cottage garden…but in someone else’s yard.  I need my garden to look symmetrical (or anything for that matter) even though it’s somewhat unnatural.  Plus with a small yard and the straight lines from our tudor style house, I neater garden would look better.  The thing is one side of the yard is under a tree, so it’s all shade…and the other side is pretty much all sun.  So there is no way I can make both sides symmetrical because I need to plant different types of flowers on either side.   I do have a rhododendron and an azalea on either side of the steps, so hopefully that will be enough to tie the two gardens together.  Aside from those two shrubs, everything else is completely different.  It drives me nuts.  I spend most of my free time researching plants, trying to find a shade and a sun plant that look similar, hardy and long blooming. 

I should have just hired a landscaper.  Gardening is not for me.  I mean, I enjoy being outside and working with my hands and watching the fruits of my labor grow. But I’m such a perfectionist.  I am out there measuring how far apart to plant the plants with a frigging ruler.  If it’s off by an inch, I replant it.  But it’s always off a little since it gets pushed around when I pack the dirt back in.  So I replant it again.  Who does that?  Apparently, I do.

I can’t even believe I’m writing this.  BB has been a decent sleeper, but it was always a struggle to get him to go to sleep.  Once he’s asleep, he’s fine.  Even if he woke up at night, he could put himself back to sleep with no problem.  It was always that initial part. We sleep trained, but it still usually took 20+ minutes of screaming and crying every single night before he went down.  This past week, he has been going to bed by himself.  Out of the blue.  Sometimes he’ll wail for a few seconds, but that’s it. It’s amazing!  Today I tried it with his naps.  Usually, we let him nap on the couch, and we’ll snuggle until he falls asleep.  Today, it was past his naptime and he wouldn’t go down, so I just put him in the crib.  I totally expected a screaming fest…but after a few seconds of wailing, it was quiet. And he’s now asleep!!!!  I know I’m probably jinxing myself for writing this post, but it’s so amazing to us that this is happening!  He used to also scream and cry as soon as he woke up in the morning, but he doesn’t do that anymore either.  He’ll play in his crib for about 20 minutes before he starts fussing for his milk.

The only thing that we’ve done differently is that I put 2 extra stuffed animals in there.  They’re a little bigger than the normal ones he snuggles with.  They’re both dogs, so they’re long and skinny….so I just put one on each end of the crib.  I’m not sure if that made the difference or if it was coincidence.

I LOVE IT.  Bed and naptime was always SO stressful before.

And the words are coming fast now!  yay!  He spoke at least 5 new words this week alone.  Now he’ll repeat what we say and remember it.  Although sometimes he’ll repeat it and then say something completely different the next time.  Oh well.  I’ll take it!

We have been looking for a minivan since we found out about baby #2.  We were torn between the Sienna and the Odyssey, but at the end, we didn’t really care which one we got because they were both so close in ratings (although the Sienna is slightly cheaper).  We’re live 5 minutes away from a Toyota and a Honda dealership, so we went to check a few of them out.  We ended up with a certified 2006 Odyssey in great condition.  It only had 35K miles on it, had a clean Carfax record and service record AND there happened to be a special going on it when we went to look at it.

Tyler LOVED the minivan.  I think it was the best toy he’s seen in a while.  He can get out in and out of it by himself and he kept running to the front of the car to play with all the dials.  We ended up being there a long time because PB had his mind set on a certain price and was trying to haggle his way down.  They weren’t really budging since there was already a deal on it.  I was getting bored and Tyler was getting REALLY REALLY fussy and terrible 2-ish (in his defense, it was past his dinner time and was almost his bed time).  I finally shot PB the look because Tyler was getting out of hand and PB told them we were going to go home, think about it and come back tomorrow morning. 

They must’ve thought we were leaving for good because they had the all the managers follow us out to our car, offering lower and lower numbers as they chased us.  By the time we got to the car, they offered PB’s goal price AND threw in their VIP package (free yearly inspections FOREVER, free shuttle service to and from the inspections and a few other things).   But we we really had to get Tyler home, so PB promised to come back after he dropped us off. Luckily our salesman was a dad to four kids and he must have understood, so he told us to get Tyler home first. (The floor manager was a single, young obnoxious jerk who kept saying, “forget your wife and kid…they’re fine…just finish the deal now”…..they almost lost the deal because he was so freaking annoying).

So PB went back and now we have an Odyssey!  They even delivered the car to our house for us!  It looks like this:  (typical, ugly minivan hahahaha), but oh, the roominess is soooo nice!

I have a 1.5 year old!  I think 18 months is one of those turning point months where something else in that brain clicks on.  After having a few tough past few months filled with frustration, tantrums and super-clinginess, BB has seemed to change overnight.  Not completely, of course….he is still my super spirited boy who must have things his way NOW or the world as he knows it is over!

He now has 14 teeth…I think.  He won’t let us look.  I think he has 2 more pre-molars and then his 2 year molars left.  He is totally fine brushing his teeth himself…and he actually loves to do it himself.  But his brushing is actually “brushing” so I have to do a quick once over, which is literally a wrestling match every night.  I have to pin him down with one arm, while squeezing his cheeks with my hand and then brushing with the other hand.

He knows the sound of all the letters in the alphabet and can recognize them on paper.  He doesn’t actually know what the letters are called, like “A”, “B”, “C”, etc.  But if you ask him what the “A” says, he’ll say “aah”…”B”, he’ll say, “buh”, etc.  If we point at a letter (in a book or a sign), he’ll recognize what it is and make the appropriate sound.  He learned most of this from watching the Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD that we got him for Christmas.  He had only watched it once every few days or so for a month or two before he picked up all the letters! (It’s not just him…my friend’s kids also picked up the letters after watching for a couple of months). 

He finally decided to enjoy stacking his blocks.  We’ve had those blocks for at least half a year and he had shown no interest in them other than dumping them out all over the floor.  He used to just stack one or two, but would walk away afterwards.  Now he stacks 6-7 (he probably could do more if he weren’t stacking on carpet) and will do it over and over again.  He will try to stack anything he can.  The one cabinet he is allowed into is all plastic jars of various sizes.  He’ll take them all out and stack them as high as he can reach.  He managed a few times to make a tower taller than himself!

He also finally decided to enjoy his puzzles.  He can put all the pieces over the appropriate spots.  He still has trouble getting some of the odder shaped pieces in.

He’s picked up a few more words, but not many…but I think he is starting his word explosion since he said 3 new words today.  His new words include: apple, orange, Heather (the babysitter’s name), flower, door, shoe (I think…it actually sounds a lot like “sh*t” when he says it haha) and Amen.  He only uses maybe 8 of his words regularly…the others he’ll say only on command.

He can walk up and down the stairs….but I still make him hold my hand because he likes to randomly turn around when he’s on the steps and it freaks me out.

He is getting better at using the fork and spoon.  He can physically do it…..but most of the time, he doesn’t want to.  He’ll use it for the first few bites and then it becomes a toy/catapult and winds up on the floor. 

He loves to touch everyone’s facial features and then touch his own.  So he’ll touch my nose…and then touch his own nose and then touch his monkey’s nose and then do the same with the ears, eyes and mouth.

He is totally into cars, trucks and trains and Elmo (or as he says it, “ElmA”).  Actually, he loves all the Sesame Street characters and knows them by name.  He is going to love it when we take him to Sesame Place in May!

He is terrible on walks.  He hates to hold anyone’s hand, so I end up holding his forearm. He spends half the walk trying to get it out of my grasp.  I usually let him walk freely unless he decides to go on someone’s yard or head towards the street.  His new thing is to sit down as soon as I start dragging him the opposite way.  Then I have to pick him up and carry him while he’s kicking and whining.

He is also terrible at the grocery store.  He always wants to get out so that he can push the cart.  We generally don’t let him out of the cart because he never stays with the cart.  For such a shy kid, he loves these public places and will take off by himself in a second.  He used to be okay in the cart…but now he’s big enough to reach the stuff in the back and the entire time, he’ll pulling things up and hurling them back into the cart.

We are re-sleep training him again.  He can put himself back to sleep easily if he wakes up at night…but he won’t go to sleep easily at the beginning of bedtime.  For a while, I was so pooped from being pregnant, that I would fall asleep during our quiet time and then he would just fall asleep in my lap.  He got used to that, so now he won’t go to sleep by himself in the crib.  But with baby #2 coming in a few months, we really have to try to get him to sleep on his own.  We still do snuggle time after his bath for 10-15 minutes and then it’s into the crib he goes.  He is so stinking stubborn with bedtime….it has always been our struggle.  Once he’s down, he’s completely fine and we’re good until he wakes up in the morning…but it’s getting him down that’s so AARGH.

We got memberships to the Philly Zoo and the Please Touch Museum.  Admission is so pricey that it’s so worth it.  Just 2-3 trips per year will have the membership paying for itself.  It’s fantastic that both the zoo and the museum are only 15-20 min away (local roads too!), so we can pretty much go all the time.  I remember growing up in Queens that going to the Bronx Zoo was a whole day planned affair because it took so long to drive there.

I’m planting our gardens now.  It’s actually really tough to plan a garden with a toddler around.  A lot of plants are toxic if digested and BB is such an oral kid that everything still goes in his mouth.  He also is a grabber, so I have to choose very hardy, prolific plants.  The beautiful, delicate plants are a no go.  I ended up with a lot of shrubs hahaha.  But I’m excited and can’t wait to see the full effect next spring.  We are also going to completely re-do our lawn because the previous owners let it go and there are more weeds than grass.  There is no way we can pull out all the weeds.

Pregnancy is going well…I still barely have time to think about it.  I actually only have a few months left and we have done nothing for this baby…not even picked a name. I don’t even remember what it’s like to have a newborn!  A friend asked me to hold her 3 month old and I barely knew how to…she seemed SOOO tiny and floppy!

I decided to switch my delivery from HUP (where I had Tyler) to the hospital by my house. It’s literally a 3 minute drive and they just re-did the L&D unit a year or two ago.  It’s part of the private chain of hospitals here and they’re all really nice (there is one further out west that is known as “the hotel”, it’s that nice).  Every room is private so there is no risk of having to share rooms.  My parents will probably be watching Tyler while we’re in the hospital, so it’s just easier being close to home so that PB can go home whenever he wants.  We might have him go home for the bath and bedtime routine.  Plus my parents won’t have to worry about driving in every day to bring Tyler to see me at the hospital (HUP isn’t that far away, but the only way there is through West Philly, which is um….not the most comfortable place for my parents to drive through).