Grant Wallace Mateus

Grant was born at 8:01 AM on Tuesday, April 7th. He weighed 7 lbs. 9.5 oz, and was 20 inches long. He's a growing boy - we're not sure how big he is now, but we have a checkup on Tuesday.

For Amanda -

I am still here, and am still alive. It just seems that sometimes there's really nothing noteworthy to report.

I'm still pregnant - I'm having a cesarean on April 7th - just a little over two weeks away. We still don't have a name for this poor boy, though Reed keeps suggesting naming him Mater. I guess we've watched Cars too many times. My doctor has cut my work schedule back to half-days, which is wonderful because I'm so exhausted all the time. Most days I'm working mornings, but there are a few days where scheduling issues make working 10-3 easier.

Spring is getting here, slowly but surely. Windows were opened today, and that was a nice feeling. Love having fresh air in the house.

So. Here we are.

Mid-February, and I’ve dropped the ball again.

Life progresses as usual here. We had a thaw a few days ago, and it rained – RAINED – and melted some of our snow. I was not sad to see it go, because it was getting gray and ugly. Of course, the gray and ugly remains, but at least it’s another reminder that spring will come, eventually.

The first winter I lived in Minnesota – twelve years ago – I had a really rough time adjusting to the long winters. Heck, who am I kidding – I still have problems with the long winters. I just remember that first year wondering if it would ever be spring again. And when it was, it was glorious. A real, true spring – not like what we sometimes had in Kentucky, where our crocuses would bloom in February, and it would be hot and humid by May. The snow slowly disappears, and trees slowly become green. It’s almost as though Mother Nature is trying to make amends for the long winters.

The baby is still unnamed, but penciled in to arrive the week of April 6th. I am trying to visualize what I will look like by then – I have eight weeks to go and can’t imagine how much bigger I may get before D-day. Reed is excited – he was talking to the baby this morning and telling the baby to watch him run fast. What was really funny, though, was when I said, “oh, the baby just kicked me” and Reed said “if the baby kicked you, the baby needs to go to time-out.”

I am starting to slow down some at work. My boss is completely supportive of this (he has three children), and doesn’t seem to mind when I say, “hey, can you handle this” if it involves something that I just can’t physically (or comfortably) do. I had a pre-term labor scare about two weeks ago, and my doctor threatened bed rest. When I told my boss that the next day, he reminded me that I shouldn’t expect to maintain the same level of activity that I usually do – no running from one end of the plant to the other, no climbing onto the roof, etc. Which is nice, but I often feel like I’m using pregnancy as an excuse – until I realize that the people I work with are the ones who are limiting me, not my pregnancy. As easy as it might be to become offended by that, I’m not. I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing or not, but I know they’re looking out for my best interest, so I try not to over think it.

Another quick look at my stats counter shows that at least three people have found my blog by googling “cats who eat scotch tape” or something of the sort. Is this a little-known phenomenon that I should educate myself on?

Typical boy behavior. Right? RIGHT??

So yesterday, I picked Reed up at daycare and was pulled aside by his teacher, Dee. She said, "You should ask Reed what he's been building with Legos."

Me: Reed, what are you building with Legos?
Reed: Lightsabers.
Dee: What else are you building, Reed?
Reed: Nuffin'
Me: Reed...
Dee: Reed, did you build a gun out of Legos today? And did you run around shooting your friends?
Me: *sob*

So yeah, he's building lightsabers (thanks, Alex) and guns out of Legos. And when Dee asked him if it was a gun, he said no, it's a water squirter.

So not only does he know that (a) he doesn't need to be playing guns at school, and (b) he was busted, he (c) covered himself with "watersquirters" as his excuse (we have "water guns" but in an effort to put off the "guns" discussion for as long as possible, I just called them "water squirters.").

In the car on the way home, I tried to talk to him about this and why it's bad to make guns and shoot our friends.

Me: Reed, do you know why we don't need to be building guns out of Legos?
Reed: I'm not building any more guns out of Legos.
Me: But Dee told me that you were doing that today.
Reed: Yeah, but I'm not going to do it anymore. I'm only going to build robots and spaceships and other stuff. No guns or lightsabers.
Me: *sigh*

So, for now, we're on a Clone Wars hiatus, and I've hidden the two lightsabers (yes, we have two - because my husband "needs his own." And yes, I'm having another boy, so I'm sure I'll go through this and worse again in a few short years.

I'd love to know who Googled

"can cats die from eating too much Scotch tape" and ended up on my blog page. If you're out there, please raise your hand. And let me know if cats can indeed die from eating too much Scotch tape.

I know that

it's been a while since I posted an actual update. I don't really have an excuse. Less daylight and cold temperatures that keep me from getting outside when we do actually have daylight are putting me in a funk. I'm sitting here watching it snow right now - we already had 10+ on the ground, and are not going to get what we were initially forecasted to get, but damn, I'm already tired of snow and all it's associated issues.

We had a nice holiday season, but I'm glad to be past it and move on. I've never been big on resolutions or New Year's Eve, but there's something about starting with a clean slate and a semi-clean calendar. I think the thing I'm most eager to get past is winter. We've had snow for a long time (I honestly can't remember when we got our first snowfall) and more than a few negative temperatures already, and it's barely officially winter. As much as warm winters in Texas seemed wrong, I would pay to have one of those right about now. Just the logistics of getting around on snow and ice are a pain. Quite truthfully, I wish I could just hibernate until spring.

I think that part of my feeling this way is due to my decreased dose of my antidep - my doctor wanted me off of it completely during pregnancy, but once I told him my history, he agreed that I didn't need to come off completely, but he still felt that my dosage should probably be reduced. My dosage was higher than it was when I was pregnant with Reed - I had a bit of PPD about six months after Reed was born and we upped my dosage, and I've just never come back down. I don't really know if 75mg of Effexor can make my life feel better than it does now, but I'm going to discuss it with him at my next visit. That's not to say that I'm sick or depressed; just that I have low energy, the desire to sleep all. the. time., and am just kind of lethargic. I just feel better when I'm more medicated (and when there's more sunlight available).

Another reason I've been in a funk is just how life works out sometimes. I had been following Emilie Lemmon's blog for a long while. I posted a few weeks ago asking for good thoughts for her. Just a few days later, on December 23rd, she peacefully passed away at home. She and her family had been (and continue to be) weighing heavily on my mind, especially during what is supposed to be such a happy and joyous time of year.

My pregnancy is going fine - this little guy is way more active than Reed was - but I also think that he's positioned differently than Reed was. At his ultrasound, he was measuring about a week and a half ahead of schedule - which isn't surprising, since there seem to be no small Mateus babies (Reed was 9+lbs, our nephews Dylan and Brandon were both 10+ lbs)I get to drink the yummy glucola in a couple of weeks for my GTT. I plan on being much more cautious with my diet in the days before the test - I don't know if I could stand to have to do the three-hour test again like I did in my previous pregnancy. It's like a sugar high followed by a crash, and it's really miserable to try to do anything else for the rest of the day after having drank that horrible super-sweet orange crap. Maybe it's a good excuse to take the rest of the day off, eh?

Please

Visit Emilie and send her thoughts of love and peace.  

No modesty here.

These Mateus babies have no qualms about showing their goods.  The first image we saw yesterday during the ultrasound was this:

A few things.

1. Ultrasound tomorrow. Hopefully we'll figure out what flavor we're having.

2. Day two of underwear at daycare = only one accident. We're going to do something to celebrate tonight.

3. I am on the verge of killing two cats. If you want to save them (aka take them from me), please let me know.

So, so random...

Mainly because I can't manage a very long train of thought these days.

We've been working on potty-training boot camp (our version) this weekend. So far, only one accident. Aside from about three hours this afternoon (and overnights - not ready to tackle that yet), Reed's been in the house and in underwear all weekend.

This week is going to be rough - Reed's favorite (and our favorite, too) teacher at daycare is leaving. Carla isn't technically Reed's teacher anymore - she is the toddler room teacher. She was our saving grace when we first moved to Hutchinson. That's when Reed was transitioning from an in-home care to a daycare center. She seemed to understand immediately how hard this was going to be on all of us, and she gave Reed all the extra hugs and attention that he needed. Even now when Reed is having a rough day, he'll ask to go into Carla's room and she can magically make everything okay. We are going to miss her so much.

With the holidays approaching, I'm sad about not spending them with family. Yes, I'll be with Alex and Reed, but I'm starting to feel sad about not going to Kentucky for Christmas. There's only been one year since we've been married that we didn't make it (Alex had just started a new job and didn't have any time built up), and only once prior to that (the year my sister got married - a week before Christmas - and I didn't have enough vacation time to do both the wedding and Christmas). When we decided to go to Kentucky in November and skip Christmas, it seemed like a great idea - and I am still really glad we went when we did. That said, it's sad to think about the things that we will miss by not being there - even though it will be a ton easier on us to not have to make the drive with Reed, reschedule Santa's visit, and so on and so forth.

I have a few blogs that I read on a regular basis; one of which belongs to Emilie. She lives in the cities and is the mother of two adorable little boys. She is also battling soft-tissue sarcoma. This has been a rough week for her, and she's been on my mind quite a bit. Her story is full of sweet and sour, as she says, but she is also very hopeful and gives me great peace whenever I read her entries.