Taking it one leap at a time: million dollar family

Anyone with kids knows that people, even strangers, feel free to comment to you about your family in public.

When we go out shopping as a family, we get the usual comments: "You've got your hands full" and "Wow, you're busy" (though we get comments less now since Isaac will talk the ears off anyone willing to listen, strangers very much included). The comments are pretty much all friendly and well-intentioned so I don't mind.

However, the comment that we get probably the most often is, "Oh, a boy and a girl! How perfect!" or "How lucky!" Some people even make derisive remarks about their own families like, "I got stuck with two boys."

Yup. With our boy and our girl we have the perfect family. Our oldest, a son to carry on the family name, and then our little princess, even spaced two years apart. Some even call it the million dollar family.

Well, this perfect family is about to get even perfecter! We're having another baby!

Pretty soon, when this baby bump gets bigger, we won't get the "How perfect!" comment anymore. I'm not sure what comments we'll get, I only hope that they continue to be well-intentioned.

The details:

We're due in early December, which puts us at almost 13 weeks right now. I've been feeling tired and nauseous on and off, but, all in all, I'm not complaining because this has definitely been my easiest pregnancy so far. Isaac was very cutely excited when we told him, and he still gives a little gasp every night when we pray for baby, but, most of the time, he just forgets about it. Kateri, of course, has no idea what's going on, but she's still very much Mama's baby, and even gets jealous when Isaac sits on my lap. However, she loves babies and, hopefully, by then she'll have matured enough not to mind being usurped.

In other news:

It has been a long long time since I last posted. The kids have grown leaps and bounds since then, but I guess I'll have to summarize.

I think Kateri usually gets left to the end so I'll start with her this time. As she goes from baby to toddler we're slowly getting a sense of what it's going to be like having a girl. She loves wearing dresses. If she finds one in the laundry she'll bring it to me and whine until I put in on her. One Sunday when we were all dressed for Mass, she tugged on my skirt and whined indicating that she wanted to wear it. It was a feminine summer skirt and I guess she liked it better than the dress she was wearing. I'm still astounded at how feminine she is, considering she's got an older brother as an example and we still don't have very many "girly" toys.

She's always finding new things to climb and "no" and "mine" are two of her favourite words. She can get quite upset when thwarted, but she's not nearly as adamant about getting her own way as Isaac was (is). She can be quite the mimic, picking up words and gestures very quickly. Today she watched me eating cherries and spitting out the pits. She's a good eater now so I gave her one to see what she would do. She put the whole thing in her mouth...and then spit the whole thing out again. Most of the time she's just my little sweetheart, often wanting to be held and cuddled. Again, in this she's pretty much the opposite of Isaac, who always wanted down, down, down. While her cuddliness can be inconvenient sometimes (when I'm trying to make lunch) I'm able to appreciate it having experienced the other end of the spectrum.

Now for Isaac. Isaac's big news is that he is now a full-time glasses wearer. We brought both kids to the optometrist for a check-up. The last time I was in, they had told me it's a good idea to bring young kids, because they can fix some problems if they catch them early enough (they also told me it's free, which didn't hurt). We didn't have the least idea that anything was actually wrong, but it turns out that Isaac has an astigmatism. I was pretty shocked. Who knew that my perfect kid could have anything wrong with him, and at so young an age? But, as far as health issues go, wearing glasses is a pretty minor one, though he will probably need them for the rest of his life. The next question I had was how on earth are we going to get this boy to keep something on his face all day? The first few days involved a lot of tears, but by the end of a week he was pretty much resigned.

We've also been thinking a lot about homeschooling since Isaac is school-age in the fall. We've decided to keep him home, at least for the first year. It's a whole new world for me, since I wasn't homeschooled, and it's pretty overwhelming. But at least kindergarten is pretty low pressure and since he's still young (he won't be four until October) I might even wait awhile before officially starting. I'm already teaching him letters and numbers whenever he's interested in learning but I must say that the idea of trying to impose structure on Mr. Mind-of-his-own is intimidating. The other day I was showing him how to do simple mazes that we found in a colouring book. I had thought maybe he'd be too young to understand the concept, but he picked it up pretty much right away. After intently tracing his way for a few minutes he started jerkily going all over the page and saying, "I'm breaking the walls! I'm breaking the walls!" Hmmm. This boy will be interesting to homeschool.

The whole family has been enjoying the nice weather. Isaac is thrilled to have a two-wheel bike (with training wheels) and wants to bike to the park everyday. Kateri loves going for walks too and has discovered the joy of sandboxes, swings, and slides for the first time. Whenever she sees playground equipment she points urgently and says "wide wide wide" which can mean either "ride", "slide", or "swing." Sean has been planting in the garden and building a better fence for it, since the critters ate everything that grew last year. And I'm slowly finding the maternity clothes and feeling thankful that I'm not too sick. Life is good and we are getting very excited for December!