The Monkey Has Learned to Use Tools!!!

Week 17 has been rough. I’m feeling extremely weak, struggling for breath, and not really capable of putting into words how awful I feel. I’ve lived through the morning sickness and lethargy, and this is totally different. Narrowly avoided being admitted to the maternity ward for a battery of tests, *whew* and offered to make myself available first thing in the morning for ekg, blood work and other stuff... I will have results in two more days. Buuuuuuut, there is a silver lining in all this stress, I was weighed yesterday and I HAVE NOT GAINED A SINGLE SOLITARY POUND!!! In fact, technically I have lost weight considering the fact I am carrying a growing baby, placenta, increased water weight, and lets not forget the fantastic rack! It’s an incredible thing and I repeated it out loud all evening... when you gain 60 lbs the first time around you feel doomed to repeat history. I’m so proud of myself. *pat* *pat* *pat*

In other more uplifting news, the monkey has learned to use tools!! A few months ago Isabelle started to use her miniature broom (of course my child has a broom, if they made miniature working vacuums she’d have that too) to whack her ceramic piggy bank off of the shelving in her room. Frightening!!! She uses it to reach toys under the couch and has really started to impress us with her analytical thinking skills. Last night we found her on her tippy toes balancing in a rolling scooter to pull open and reach her toothbrush in the top drawer in her closet - even scarier, so we had to move all of the interesting things into the bottom drawer, and now I can’t find her toothbrush (which is why it was in the top drawer to begin with) I’m sure it will show up with all the dog bones buried in the back yard.

She has also started to finish off two syllable words, it started on Mother’s Day with her calling grammy (my mom) DONNA!!! So hilarious, she has continued to call my mom by her first name ever since, even walks around all day sing-songing “dooooonna doooooona donna donna dooooooooonna” its just precious. She calls my dad “Stebe” since she replaces “v” with “b”. Its cool, we can actually almost understand everything she says now that she finishes the words.

Only about 155 days to go till poor little boy with no name is born!!