36 Week Appointment

Everything looks good, baby is still head down and is measuring 1 week ahead. I was surprised to find out that I'm already 1cm dilated! In the past I haven't started at all until the very last week, so I'm hoping I won't have to be induced this time. Many people can be 1cm for quite a while, so I'm not getting my hopes up too high, but it's nice to see some improvement a bit earlier this time around. Here's my 36 week belly.

Until this week I was fine with Baby staying in there, but now I've been in a lot of pain and more ready to get this baby out! My lower back is really sore, it hurts to walk, my belly is just huge and doesn't have too much stretch left in it, so when he changes position it's painful. It really doesn't help that I can't relax very much. Having a 2 and 3 year old keeps me on my feet quite a bit! Plus all this apartment searching and touring, climbing stairs to the 3rd floor to see some of them, then trying to get our place organized, sorted through and some of it boxed up so I have less to do once it comes time to move. Today I got the kitchen clean, dishes and laundry done, newborn baby clothes in the dresser, along with all the blankets, set up the bassinet and put stuff I'll need in our room so that's ready too. Earlier today we went to the clinic for Tyler's labs, dropped off forms at the Psychologist clinic, dropped off more forms at the SSI building, got tabs, went to the bank and auto parts store and then home. So I was already tired before I started the housework!

I also got the boys a really cool electronic aquarium today. They both love fish tanks! They had fish tanks on the Oncology floor, at the speech clinic and we look at the fish in Walmart sometimes too. Unfortunately we're not allowed to have fish in our home because of Tyler's restrictions. He can't be breathing in the bacteria much, plus having any standing water is a restriction. So when I saw this on Craigslist I just had to get it! The boys watched the fish for the longest time. We got squeals of excitement, huge grins, hugs and lots of "bye bye fish!" as the fish swam across the screen and out of sight. It can stand up on it's own or be hung on the wall. I don't think I'll hang it up until we move. It also has water sounds with volume control or we can just turn the sound off. The frame around it is also a mirror, so Dawson was also making faces in the mirror while watching the fish. I took 2 pics, it's hard to see the whole thing with the flash off, but with it on I couldn't see the fish!

My cute little monkeys are doing good. They had the week off school, so we visited my mom on monday, then my grandma on thursday. They still had Speech and OT, so the other days were still fairly busy. It was really nice to have 2 days with no appointments so we could go visiting! It's pretty rare to have a day with nothing going on. Tyler has been very talkative lately and picking up on new words. He now says "uh oh!", which is really cute. He's been signing "more" by himself for a few weeks now and he just started saying the word too! He babbles a lot, he'll even come up to me and babble like he's talking to me. It's great to see him so expressive! Tyler will be getting re-evaluated in June, so that will be exciting to see if he has met his goals and to see where he is. Iupdated the development charts for both boys and Tyler's main delay right now is communication. The rest really weren't very far behind at all. The other things he was delayed with were speech-related. It's hard to do things and follow directions if you can't understand what is being asked of you! So I think once the speech gets better, those areas will also. He does understand "put in" and "can I have it?" and will usually follow those directions, depending on his mood.

Dawson has been adding more words also. He'll now say "please" occasionally and we're working on using more descriptive words. I started by having him pick out his own shirt. So he can chose between "blue shirt" or "red shirt". Then it went further and became "red car shirt", "blue train shirt", etc. Now he does it for other things too, he'll name a color when identifying an object, like a yellow duck. Also, instead of just asking for juice, he'll say "apple juice". His sentences are a little more complete too. He'll actually say "I want more juice" sometimes, instead of just "more juice".

Here's some pics. Dawson really likes his orange monkey shirt. :)

Tyler actually stopped to pose for the camera! I thought that was so cute, he's never done that before.

Dawson wanted another pic, he was in a pretty good mood last night after seeing grandma and great grandma. :)

Tyler still posing

Tyler throwing things into the bathtub. As long as it's not the toilet, I really don't care! I love his face though! This is the cute look I get when he's in trouble. Dawson will drop what he's doing and run, but Tyler will freeze in position and give me cute faces. Really, how could a person get mad at that cute little face?!