Zahra is 2! Part 1

I am so far behind in keeping up on my blog so heres a quick synapse of whats been going on. The past 6 weeks have flown by so fast! The drive out to Idaho went okay....we had some issues with our car topper (yes it opened on us but luckily just the cat carrier flew out) and Zahra quickly learned that she can get out of her carseat when she tells us she has to go potty so for a while we were stopping every hour. So our planned 24 hour trip took more like 30 hours. I still can't believe we drove straight thru! Our stuff arrived 5 days after we arrived so the unpacking began. Then I began my new job 4 days after that. I worked full time for 4 weeks and am now starting my 1 shift a week this week~ YAY!! I am working in the Family Maternity Center at Saint Alphonsus and am loving it!! I just finished training in post-partum and will do L&D begining of next year. Post partum really is perfect for me right now (being I am 34+ weeks pregnant). Its pretty easy and you can sit quite abit. Anil's job got delayed by a couple weeks and will start on his unit the 3rd week in August. So he has been taking care of Zahra pretty much full time. I wouldn't quite call him a stay at home Dad because I think that requires him to do all the grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry and cooking too-- but he is doing the most important job and that is taking care of our little girl and keeping her safe!!


We had a fun filled weekend of celebrating the birth of our sweet Zahra! On her actually birthday we went to a fun toddler play area,Winnie the Pooh in the theaters, then ate lunch and rode the bummer boats at Wahoo's.  As you can see below she is having a blast with her cousin, Blake.

More to come on her birthday party......

Graduation & Saying goodbye to our friends & family :'(

Anil’s graduation from the Critical Care Fellowship at Mayo Clinic!

Saying goodbye

We are going to miss our friends here in MN & WI so much. It finally started hitting me when I actually started saying bye to people the past couple weeks. I really made me sad when Zahra would ask about her friends over and over again after seeing them…and then say ‘bye bye’. I know she doesn’t get it that we are moving but I told her that we are going ‘bye bye’ for a while and will see them again but it will be a long time. I know we will be visiting at least once or twice a year and I hope that some of our friends will come out to Idaho and see us too. Here a just a few pictures I took of people visiting us and saying goodbye…I wish I would have gotten everybody that visited.

We are going to miss you all!!

Zahra’s best bud Amy~

 (Amy has been watching Z since she was 4 months old…this pic is from May 2010)

Amy & Izzy

  (meeting Zahra at the hospital)

 

Loretta

I have so many pictures of these 2 girls it was hard to pick!

Graedin & Keinin

(March 2010~ meeting Graedin for the 1st time. He was about 4 weeks here)

Breakfast on the farm with the Hemmer’s

Audrey & Zahra

(First time meeting)

Zahra’s first school bus ride!

Hanging with Lyla & Jenny

I think this picture is hilarious…Zahra is trying to take a picture with the phone…like her Mommy does.

(Lyla’s 1 year bday party)

What a sweet picture of Lyla. Zahra loved Lyla and still asks about her.

(one year earlier)

Baby Patel is looking good!

Today I had an ultrasound to check to see how my placenta was doing. Well the good news is that it moved up! So don’t have to worry about previa anymore~YAY! Baby is growing well and is 2 pounds and is in the 50%. It was so much fun to see our baby this far along. We could see baby blink its eyes, move its tongue, suck on its fingers. Its just amazing! I had the best ultrasound tech~ the scan probably last 30 minutes just so we could look at baby longer. Baby was so active moving all around…probably because of the glucose tolerance test I just took. And that brings about the bad news….I failed miserably :(  So I have to go back tomorrow for the 3 hour glucose tolerance test, just what I want to be doing when we move next week. And if a fail tomorrow I will have to go back on Monday for some more appointments. Oh well I just hope & pray it comes back okay.  I was just talking to a friend about this a couple days ago. PCOS makes you more opt to having gestational diabetes. My PCOS developed after I had Zahra for whatever reason…so I passed with flying colors when I had Z. Surprisingly I have gained less weight with this pregnancy and is up +12.

 

Sucking fingers just like big sister!

                         Feet at 18 weeks                                                     same scale ~10 weeks later                             Feet at 28 weeks                                                

 

Zahra loves this picture of babies hand ‘waving’

The tech even put a little video on my CD for me. This is a straight on shot of babies face and then babies arms crossed.

Potty time with the diaper doodles!!

   

 

We have signed with Zahra since she had her first bite of cereal at 5 months. The program we used ‘Baby Signs’ had a potty time program specifically for starting potty training before 2. So we started introducing it to Zahra late winter and very casually introduced the potty to her. At that time I was not motivated to go full swing into it ~ there was just too much going on. But Zahra did well with even that part and would sit on the potty, read books, and at times would have success.

Here she is tonight using the potty and showing off her signs

      

Signing ‘Potty’                                                                     Signing ‘More’

         Signing ‘All done’

Signing ‘Good Job!’ 

We haven’t quite mastered the thumbs up yet.  Even though she can say all these words she still loves to sign them too. It was actually useful tonight at dinner because she had her mouth full and so she signed ‘potty’ so I whisked her off to the potty and sure enough she had to go.

 

The Diaper Doodles before they got their ‘big kid underwear’

  Finally, our schedule was looking like it was slowing down. All of our classes, bible studies, and overnight visitors ended and left. We tried to do all of our traveling for visiting our out of town friends in May or the very beginning of June. So we had a good part of June just too focus on potty training. I really wanted to do it over the summer, in Rochester (not in our new house) and a few months before the baby comes. We stayed home for a few days and lived & breathed practicing going potty. I have used the baby signs program & the naked method and combined their strategies. Zahra has been naked waist down alot (good thing its been hot) and we don’t use any pull-ups or underwear (yet) and only have diapers on while sleeping. Of course when we go out now if its hot enough she wears a summer dress and if its cool she wears very loose pants. Yes there were a couple days where I was over it and wanted to give up. The first couple days I would watch her like a hawk and as soon as she showed signs of having to go pee/poo I would take her to the potty. We also would go at regular scheduled times (before lunch, before naptime, before dinner ect). A couple days into it Zahra started holding her pee for HOURS- sometimes 6 hours! And the whole purpose is to get them to pee as often as possible so that they can get  the hang of controlling their bladder. That was very frustrating and to actually see her bladder was full and sit on the potty for quite a while and have nothing happen. One night Zahra sat on the potty for an hour. The funny thing is she was pretty content to do so. I wanted to go for an late evening walk and wasn’t going to take her until she used the potty. She hadn’t peed since naptime and she drank a ton of water and could see her bladders was full. Well luckily those frustrating times are over. Zahra figured out how to control and release her urine after about a week of practice. We now have her sit on the potty every 2.5-3 hours and she will go pee within a minute. We haven’t had any accidents since Thursday so going on 5 days! She is about 50/50% on pooping on the potty~ if she doesn’t go in her potty she will go in her diaper during naptime. I tried going without a diaper at naptime twice right after she had a big pee but at this point she is not quite ready for that yet. I think the main reason is that she still takes 3.5-4 hour long naps and I don’t really want to slow her intake of water during the day. So I think we will work on sleep time potty training in a few months. One thing I said I wouldn’t do and did was give her candy for rewards. First, I would use smarties (sugar candy) to get her to drink a ton of water so we would have more opportunity to use the potty through out the day. For every one smartie she would have a big drink of water~worked really well once she stopped holding it. And then we started using M&M’s for rewards when she went. 1 M&M for pee, 2 for a poo. Zahra had candy a couple times in the past (never M&M’s) I am really glad I waited to give her too much because it made potty training that much more effective & fun. Overall, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be and am so glad I did it before the arrival of Zahra’s sibling. So I am hoping that our next little one will be as easy to potty train, not that we are completely done by any means. I’m sure there are a few more accidents to be had. I am glad I have this post to look back on so I remember what worked for my big girl Zahra and maybe apply the same strategy for the next one!



I am so much more vigilant with teeth brushing now that candy has been introduced. Good thing Zahra loves it!

Love this song!

Its been a tough past couple days and tonight I saw Rascal Flatts perform this on the CMT award show.Wow this song just really hit me hard! Its perfect for what I am going thru right now. I feel like this could be a song that God is singing to me.....

23 more days!

What a fun visit!!

My family from Boise decided to come out for a visit one last time before we move. It was a quick visit but we did so much and had alot of fun.   

Oxbow having a picnic then visiting the zoo.

 

Castle Park was fun! Zahra spent most of the time in the big sand box. Blake had fun in the castle!

 

 

6 Months Pregnant!

So I had a really great 3 weeks…but unfortunately that was short lived. Oh well not too much longer. I keep trying to tell myself- enjoy it, enjoy it, it will be over before I know it!

 

 

Blake heard me talking about the Y with Jen on the phone and that was all he could talk about on the drive to MN so we had to go. The duck slide was a huge hit. Zahra talked about the Y and the duck for days afterwards and still brings it up. We are going to have to visit the Y one more time before we move.

 

 

Grandma came over for a game of scrabble

 

Chucky Cheese

Look closely and you can see Z in the corner of the picture. She was all talk- yelling his name from the table and then when he came over she ran the other way.

   

 

Holty family BBQ

   

 

 

 

MOA

     

 

 

So about 3 weeks ago I was telling my Mom that this is my favorite age that Zahra is in and how much fun she is. Well a 180’ happened a week or so after I said this and all of a sudden my little angel grew horns (kidding of course) And this is what we have been dealing with. If its not what Z wants (for example:getting off the ride) she lets you know and will proceed to throw things, hit, and lay flat on the ground with her face down. What is going on!?!?!

 

 

   I love this picture of Blake!

Up, up , and away!

 

 Yes another tantrum :(  she was laying flat on the ground face down screaming when Dad decided it was time to go in the stroller. 5 minutes later she was out. Ahhh finally. She never falls asleep anywhere but her bed & carseat~ she must have been exhausted.

Family photo…too bad you can only see the stroller and not the beautiful sleeping Zahra.