Getting in touch with my roots

Yesterday I attempted to make my first batch of Czech kolaches ever. For those of you not in the know, a REAL Kolache is not filled with sausage and cheese - those are called pigs in a blanket. An authentic Kolache is a semi sweet flavored bread like pastry with a sweet filling... traditionally, prune, poppyseed, apricot, or cottage cheese. I used a combination of my Grandmother's recipe and some recipes I found on the Internet. They took most of the day and were way more work than I had bargained for. They turned out pretty good for a first attempt. My only failure was that I baked a good half of them for too long. I grew up eating Kolaches at my Grandmother's every Sunday. Since she has passed, they are an elusive craving that I get from time to time. There are a few places to get them in Houston, but none that even compare to an authentic Czech kolache. Now I have a small stash in my freezer and life is that much sweeter because of it.

My Little Ham

Lunchtime

One of my most favorite times of the day is when Danyel comes home for lunch. I know that we are very lucky to be able to eat 3 meals together as a family every single day. Not to mention that these days since Carsten rules most of the conversation, it can be down right knee slapping.

Here is just a little tidbit from lunch today:

Carsten (giggling): Mama, look at Daddy! (side note: Danyel was eating a chicken leg - more like devouring it like a carnivore gone mad)

Me: I know. What is daddy doing?

Carsten (still giggling): He's eating like a pig!

Good stuff.

My First Born

Amidst all this business of getting ready for our new addition to the family, Carsten has become quite a young man. His metamorphosis into a "real" person just within the last few months has been astounding. His personality is shining through in ways that shock us every single day.

He is very stubborn and strong willed like his mom. This is the "challenging" part of his personality. It makes for a lot of tantrums and power struggles, but I know that this character trait will serve him well in life in the right situation. Unfortunately, right now, it is making potting training an impossible feat. Carsten will not use the potty. Period. He refuses to give up his diapers. End of story. Eventually, we are just going to have to go cold turkey on him, I have a feeling. It is going to get nasty, but I think that it is going to be the only way to accomplish the task once and for all. Lord help us! This part of his personality also makes daily transitions difficult. If he is focused on doing something and we have to tear him away from it, he loses it. It is hard for us to steer his attention to something else.

Carsten is very much so a creature of habit and loves routine. He likes to have things a certain way. He likes to have a certain cup with juice in it every morning. He will not go to sleep with anything out of order in his room. He has to have "Doggy", "Teddy", and "Other Teddy" in bed with him, but nothing else. His toys have to all be in the toy box or on the shelf like always. A lot of this comes from being 2, but a lot of it is also inherited and will stick with him. (Thanks Grandpa Sralla).

He is very active and total boy. I wouldn't say he is active as in "wild", but he is constantly moving and exploring. He does not sit still. EVER. He loves to go, go, go. He gets very restless at home and constantly is asking to go bye-bye. This is something he has inherently learned from Danyel and I as we love to stay busy during the day and hate to sit still at home for too long.

He is EXTREMELY talkative (like his father) and his language skills are remarkable for his age. I am surprised multiple times a day by what comes out of his mouth. He seems to have a much better vocabulary than most kids his age. He talks in full sentences very clearly. Danyel and I have no problem understanding 95% of what he says and friends and relatives that are close can understand a good majority of it.

Like Danyel, he is extremely mechanical and curious about how everything works (hence the door obsession).

He has an amazing sense of humor.

He is a performer. If he realizes that something gets a chuckle out of someone, he turns it on until he has tears rolling down your cheeks. He loves to "show" things to people and can spend half an hour giving you a play by play of what he has done that day. He is more of an extrovert than either Danyel or I and is extremely friendly with other kids and adults. Just the other day at the play area at the mall he approached a 4 or 5 year old girl and said very enthusiastically, "Come on! Let's play!" Unfortunately, she was a little put off by his enthusiasm and forwardness. She told him to go away and that she did not want to play with him. I felt so sad for him, but he just laughed it off and went about his business. I hope he keeps this attitude when it comes to rejection. He is so intrigued by older kids because he has something to learn from them.

His memory is astounding. It scares us the things that he will remember... things he will repeat that we had no idea he was even paying attention to at the time. About a month ago we were at Home Depot and he was not listening to us and throwing tantrum after tantrum. I had to eventually take him to the car while we waited for Danyel to finish up. Today we went to Lowes garden center and as I was getting him out of his car seat he said to me, "No crying in the store Mama or you have to go sit in the car." We must have been to a garden center 5 times since that Home Depot experience (have you met my husband with the very green thumb?), but he still remembered that incident.

He is very adaptable. He goes with the flow for the most part. He adapts well to new environments and new situations. When we travel as a family, he doesn't miss a wink of sleep being in a different place and seems to like the change in environment. When Danyel and I leave him behind to travel alone, I get anxious, but he doesn't even seem to notice. He takes it all in stride and goes about life as usual wherever he is.

He has always been very independent. I think this is common, though, with first born children. They learn to play and entertain themselves at an early age because they have no siblings around at first to play with.

Carsten is a total Mama's boy, which I relish most of the time, but it can get tiresome being the one he prefers to do everything. When it comes to playing, though, he goes straight to Danyel. He knows that Dad is the fun one. I spend a lot of evenings watching Danyel and Carsten wrestle or play "nite-nite" and I am overwhelmed with gratitude for my two boys.

Our biggest challenge with Carsten is discipline right now. Using time out has been the most effective way of getting him in check, but it's not always a sure thing. He is so determined to explore and do what he wants that it is sometimes difficult for us to get him to follow direction. We are pretty consistent with keeping on him until we get a result, but we are just anxiously awaiting the day when he does what we ask him to do the first time around. (I hear you other mothers out there laughing. Stop it!)

My original intent in setting up this blog was to help me keep a record of my children's lives and the special moments in my life. With the baby soon arriving and stealing some of Carsten's spotlight here on the web, I wanted to devote a post just to him. I wanted to have a record of what he was like at this particular moment in time. I wanted to put into writing for the umpteenth time what a remarkable blessing he has been in my life. He has taught me an infinite number of things, such as patience, unconditional love, and selflessness. He is the child who taught me how to be a mother (my second born will surely be the one to teach me the art of multitasking). He is the child that so dramatically changed my life in an instant. He has given my life a purpose that it never had before. Pretty soon our time alone together will end and our family will welcome yet another blessing. However, I will always cherish the 2 years and 4 months that I had alone with my first born to bond as mother and son and to discover the remarkable little person that he is.

Carsten flying his first kite

Meet "The Belly"

The Home Stretch

It's been a while since I last posted, but things have been very busy around here the last couple of months. My nesting instinct was brutal with this pregnancy and nearly killed me (and Danyel, for that matter). Every home improvement project needing to be done in the last few years is now done. I have cleaned and organized every inch of this house. The baby's nursery is done. Carsten's room has been turned into a "big boy" room with queen size bed and all. We've had the house painted, the gutters cleaned, re stained the deck, replaced the patio door, had the carpets cleaned, and wallpapered the downstairs bath. I have stockpiled toilet paper, paper towels, toiletries, food, etc. as if once the baby comes we are not going to be able to leave the house for 2 months. We have enough food frozen to feed us for a month. I have even almost finished my shopping for Father's Day, which is still over a month away. I am so prepared this time around. Call me crazy, but I know the chaos that is about to descend upon this house for the next few months. Last time, I thought I knew. But, you can't REALLY know until you have experienced life with a newborn before.

Now, we just wait. At most, we wait 12 more days. I have scheduled my induction for May 23rd. Being that my body is a safe house for babies, I don't expect to go into labor on my own, so I am banking on the 23rd, which is two days after my due date. As of this Monday, I was still not dilated any and the baby's head was still high. By this point last time with Carsten I was already dilated almost 4 cm, but, I still had to be induced a week after my due date. I have started having some contractions and cramping this week, so hopefully I will have made some progress by my appointment next week. I would like to get a little bit of a head start on dilation before my induction to just make the process of labor and delivery go by that much faster.

I am feeling very miserable lately. My mobility in general has dramatically decreased in the last few weeks. I am very uncomfortable and my patience is gone. Taking care of Carsten during the day has been an almost impossible feat. Wrestling a toddler constantly while carrying a full term baby in your uterus is very challenging. But, we are making due. Danyel has picked up a bunch of slack lately, but during the day while he is at work, I am on my own.

The doctor thinks that the baby will weigh in at about 8 lbs. 10oz. by the time I deliver according to the ultrasound he did on Monday. Carsten was 8 lbs. 4 oz., so this didn't surprise me or alarm me. But, make no mistake, I am very fearful of giving birth again. Just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes. My 2 1/2 hours of pushing with Carsten with an epidural that had run dry scarred me for life. I can't remember the pain in detail, or anything for that matter, but I do remember almost feeling outside of my body because the pain was so intense that I could not bear it. I am hoping to have a much quicker delivery this time around with NO pain. I plan on having a serious talk with the doctor on Monday to make sure that he understands that I want to be so numb that I FEEL NOTHING. Period.

Aside from the birth, I am really nervous about bringing home a newborn again. The first few months with Carsten were bittersweet for us being that he cried all the time. He was a very difficult baby and I am scared to death that this baby will be the same or worse. I remember so many days that Danyel would come home from work and Carsten and I would just be sitting on the couch crying together. I am hoping that with experience under my belt, I will be able to withstand the experience much better this time around.

On a positive note, I am getting really anxious about meeting this baby and finding out if it is a boy or girl. Everywhere I go, people tell me that I am having a girl, but most family and friends think we are going to have another boy. As I get closer to finding out, I find that I am probably hoping for a girl more than I thought I was - if only because I am not sure (now that I have almost completed a second pregnancy) if I will have the energy to do this all over again. If we have a girl, we are pretty certain that this will be the last addition to our family. If we have a boy, we have talked about trying again for a girl.

My most favorite thing about this pregnancy has been my lack of weight gain. As of today, I have only gained 18 lbs. With Carsten, I was already inching up on 30 lbs. However, my belly is MUCH larger than it was last time around. Go figure. It has also gone by so quickly being that I am preoccupied with Carsten. With Carsten, it just dragged along because of all the excitement of being a first time mom.