I've been having a hard time coming up with fun things to blog about. I get no flagrant system errors, Lucky O'Leary doesn't come to visit, and I didn't get to go to Las Vegas. My life is pretty stable (read: boring) lately. We wake up at 7:30, we play inside in the morning, we eat some lunch and take a nap, and then we play outside until Dylan gets home. I either make dinner or heat up leftovers and we play until bedtime. Then Dylan and I sit and watch one or two of the 13 shows we're into now and kill time until bedtime.

Sometimes we mix it up, like last night we needed milk so we walked the 2 blocks to the Creamery and gave Shay his first taste of ice cream. He loved it. Occasionally we'll walk over to campus when I have to mail something. We'll get that done quick and then have some lunch and Shay (who is obsessed with video games) will repeat "Games!" over and over until we go spend some time in the bowling alley/arcade downstairs in the Wilk.
**Oh, quick funny story, Dylan was playing God of War II and couldn't get past one difficult part. He went to the computer to find some tips, and when he came back he saw that Shay had picked up his controller and was playing. What shocked him was that Shay had managed to beat the difficult part and had moved on to the next area. We still have no idea how he did that.**

Most of the time, though, we're just playing and cleaning. I'm totally over my pregnancy sickness (knock on wood) and now I'm just hungry. The weather has been beautiful so most of our playing is outside. It's going to turn cold again though, I hear, so that will end soon. Even this post is putting me to sleep. I've got to get some oomph back into my life.

My cousin in North Carolina, whom I haven't spoken to in 10+ years, needed to have a relative out-of-state help her son with a school project. Since most of my family is still in NC, I somehow got volunteered. The project was based on the book Flat Stanley and entailed her mailing me a construction paper cutout of her kindergarten son and me doing something Utah-y with it. I decided to take it up into the mountains and make snow angels with it. Snow is one of Utah's great commodities, right?
















So, I guess that was something weird that we did. Flat Stanley. Who would have thought

The other night Shay was crying, so I went into his room and found him sleeping sideways in his crib with his legs sticking all the way out of the bars. He'd gotten stuck and couldn't get the leverage to pull his legs back in. I'm pretty sure the bars were cutting off his circulation, so I gently put his legs back in and resolved to do something about it.

In trying to decide what to do I started dismantling his crib with the intention of setting up the toddler bed we found for him on Craig's List. He's really attached to that crib, though, and after I took off the sliding side, and realized that side had no structural purpose in regards to the rest of the crib, I watched him climb up into the crib and pretend to go to sleep. Lightning struck and I decided to just leave the crib the way it was and see if he could handle it.















The first pictures came out fuzzy, but you can see how much he likes it!















For naptimes yesterday he begged to be put down for bed at 11am, a little early in my opinion. But, as he gathered his blankets, juice, and binkie and headed to bed I thought "Why not?" I tucked him in, closed the door (which is how he normally sleeps), and sat in the hall to listen. He promptly got out of bed and began playing with his toys in his room. So, I grabbed a book and just let him play in there by himself. "When he gets tired, he'll lie down," I told myself. After an hour of playtime I couldn't feel my nether regions anymore, so I went in and got him. We had some lunch and rough-housed a little to tire him out. I tucked him in again and asked him to stay in bed.















Then I watched at the crack in the door. When he hopped out of bed I went back in and laid him back down. The second time he waited a good 60 seconds before getting down again. I went in a second time and laid him down and told him it was time for naps and that he needed to stay in bed and that we'd play with toys together when he woke up. I could tell he was tired, but I wasn't very optimistic that this new bed thing would work out yet. I stood at the door for 5 minutes and was pleased to see him playing in bed with his teddy for awhile and then turn over to go to sleep. He slept for 2.5 hours (a normal nap for him) and didn't get out of bed once!
















Last night we tucked him in at about 7:30 (he asked to go to bed again) and he didn't get out of bed once! He sang to himself for awhile, played with his duckie (as shown above) and went to sleep. He did fall out of bed twice, but didn't cry either time! I checked on him before I went to bed and found him on the pad I put under his bed in case he fell. I put him back in bed and he promptly fell out again. When I put him back in this time I scooched him all the way over to the wall and he was back asleep in no time. He even slept in 1/2 an hour this morning.

Looks like our experiment was a success! I'll keep you updated on our progress, but he's really excited about his "noo baed" and I hope the novelty keeps up for awhile longer. In a month we'll move him to the toddler bed we got for him so that the crib is ready for the new baby. We find out on April 16th what the gender is, so stay tuned for that fun tidbit. Any guesses? We'd like either, we don't much care which as long as it's healthy. A little boy to play with Shay would be great, but we really want a little girl, too. Whatever it is, it's going to be incredibly loved and have a ton of little cousins to play with!

I had my second checkup yesterday and it went great! All my tests came back normal and I got an A+ for blood type. :) The wait was rather quick, thank heavens since I had Seamus with me. I dropped Dylan at work at 9 and headed straight for my appointment. After only 10 minutes of waiting I got to see the nurse. That's an unheard-of record for this office in my experience. One quick pee-in-a-cup, get weighed, blood pressure episode later we were back in the waiting room waiting to see the doctor. After about 2 minutes of watching Cars with Seamus my name was called to go see the doctor! That's just incredible. Last time it was 45 and 35 minutes of waiting, respectively.

This visit was an easy one, just the doc going over my blood test results, asking if I had any questions, making the same jokes as he does every time, and finding the baby's heartbeat with a tiny portable ultrasound on my tummy. Seamus was great, although he was a little concerned when I lay down on the table for the heartbeat exam. He still was an angel and I rewarded him by going and getting donuts from Krispy Kreme last night. He doesn't know that that was his reward, as I don't want to set up food as a reward, but at the doc's office he saw a donut and really wanted it but I told him "no". This morning when I gave him his donut his eyes got really big and he kept saying "Mmmm, tasty" while he was eating it. He especially likes the sprinkles variety. What is it with kids and sprinkles?

In other news, it got up to 60 degrees yesterday and Shay and I had a great time playing outside. We drew on the driveway with chalk, explored the backyard, and we were about 30 minutes early to pick up Dylan from work so we walked around the beautiful gardens in the beautiful weather. It was awesome! I miss being outside so much and I know my little guy does, too. I'm tired of watching TV! I can't wait to get out with him more.