Well, our first attempt at naked potty training isn't going so well. It's partly my fault....she was walking around putzing like crazy and I should have made her go sit on the potty. Instead, she ran around until it was too late and then pooped her way down the hall (which -- fortunately or unfortunately, I'm not sure which -- is carpeted). I guess she was trying to make it to the bathroom. The good news? She's not constipated anymore. Unfortunately it made for one disgusting mess to clean up. Thank goodness for my Spotlifter. Hopefully I did a good enough job that there won't be any tell-tale spots when the carpet dries.

Here's Alison making our official announcement

My daughter is so sweet. Yesterday, I was sick as a dog.....not morning sickness but some gastrointestinal bug. Kevin took the day off to take care of Alison since the only thing that I could get out of bed for was a run to the bathroom. He kept her away from our bedroom most of the day, because we didn't want to risk her getting sick, too, but he did let her come and stand in the doorway a few times so she could say hi. At one of those visits he told her, again, that mommy was sick and she said she was going to go get some medicine so mommy would feel better. I almost cried. Later in the day, while Kevin was making the two of them some supper, she got ahold of some sticky tabs that I had been using for marking pages and brought one to me. She said she had a band-aid for me and it would make me feel better. So she came in and stuck it on my hand and told me that now I would feel better.

Fortunately, whatever it was was only a 24 hour thing because I'm feeling much better today.

So what's been going on in my life this last week?

Well, the three of us headed down to Cincinnati to get together with my two best friends from college and their husbands. Kevin and Alison had a good time. I, on the other hand, spent most of the weekend about thisclose to praying to the porcelain goddess. Whether it was something I ate or whether it was pregnancy related, I don't know, but I'm feeling much better today. In addition to that, I nearly had a heart attack Saturday morning because I was spotting a little bit. It wasn't a lot, and happened a couple more times that day and once Sunday morning and has stopped. I had another ultrasound today anyway, so I figured there wasn't too much point in worrying about it, since there was nothing I could do about it besides rest, which I was doing anyway since I was sick.

So we had the ultrasound was this morning and I was relieved to see that everything is fine. We have a nice strong heartbeat and everything looks good. According to the measurements, I have a due date of December 29, which is only 2 days off from what I came up with when I used one of the online due date predictors. However, because of Alison's fetal surgery, we'll be delivering at 37 weeks, which will be in the first (full) week of December.

We had a big question about Alison's ability to potty trained answered this morning. Because of the doctor's appointment, I had to get her up a little early. Due to the excitement of the weekend and the messed up schedule it caused, she was still sound asleep. Once she was finally awake, I took her to the bathroom and discovered that her diaper was still completely dry! So she has the ability to go 10 1/2 hours without peeing (actually more than that, since the last time she went was before her bath). That's something we've never been sure about, since she's always wet when we get her up. But a lot of the time she's been awake and playing in her crib for a while before we get her up, which I'm sure is the reason why she's wet. So now we won't have to wait until her next round of urodynamics tests to see if we've been potty training in vain.

Just wanted to give a little bit of an update. We had our first ultrasound today. Everything looks good so far....we confirmed that we are having a singleton, which I suspected based on what my hcg levels were doing, that it is in the right place, and there is a nice yolk sac. :) Since I am not quite 6 weeks yet, it was too early for a heartbeat, but if all continues to go well, it should be there next week. I'm feeling pretty good, so far. One of my meds makes me a little queasy at times, but other than that, I'm mostly just tired. It seems that, most days, I'm passed out on the couch by 3:00 or so. It's a good thing that Alison naps until 4:00!

I talked to my mom today and she told me she almost blew my Father's Day surprise for my dad. My brother's birthday is Friday and for his birthday present, I scanned some slides of him as a fairly newborn that my dad found last year with the intention of printing them out and putting them in a small baby album. His real baby album has been misplaced, leading to a family joke that he is adopted. Anyway, my mom said something to my dad about what I had done and he zeroed right in on the "scanned slides" part of the story. "They can scan slides?" He said. My mom quickly covered by saying that Kevin had done it at work and it was a real PITA to do, because she knew that otherwise he would be headed downstairs to look for his slides. And the problem with that is that his slides are in my office, being scanned and eventually made into a slideshow for him for Father's Day. She thinks she threw him off the trail, but just in case will move stuff around in the storage room so it won't be quite so obvious they're gone.

We've kind of slacked off on the potty training around here. There are a couple of reasons for it. Alison was pretty sick for the better part of a week, and we got out of the routine and I've been too tired to fight with her about it. We had her in underwear last Thursday and she was doing great. We thought we were home free regarding poop since she had pooped (in the potty I might add) at lunchtime. Hah! As per our Thursday night ritual, we were watching Beauty and the Beast. She got real squirmy towards the end of the movie, so that must have been when she pooped because otherwise she will lay on her pillow and not move until the movie is over. Kevin got her cleaned up and was dealing with the poopy underwear and I was filling up the bathtub. She was running around the living room naked. The next thing we know she came flying into the bathroom and grabbed the potty seat, shoving it at Kevin to put it back on the toilet. She had to go, and she had to go bad! Unfortunately, Kevin wasn't fast enough and she tinkled on the floor a little bit before he ended up just holding her over the toilet. If it ever gets warmer here (a week ago we had 4 inches of snow again) I think I'm going to try ditching the twisters for a week or so and seeing if going naked while we're at home will finally help everything to click.

I think that's about it from here.