Mommy vs. Circumstance: A Mommy Win

So my plan for St. Valentine's Day was to make cupcakes - as close to Georgetown's red velvets with cream cheese frosting as possible - as a surprise for Matt. Oh yeah, and I mean from SCRATCH, from the cake, to the frosting. And I've never done it before. It was going to be tricky to make it all happen, but if everything happened right on schedule...

I got an email from a client wanting to meet at 1pm, right in the middle of the day. But that's okay, I was expecting it, I could still make everything work.

Then, just as Max and I were getting ready to head to the grocery to pick up some necessary items for the cupcakes, I got a call from the school. "Your son's ears might be bleeding." What? Bleeding? "Um....I guess I'll pick him up then." So to the subway, rather than the grocery, we went.

I called the doctor on the way and set up an appointment for a couple of hours later. Pick up Patrick - oh, and of course Karol wants to come to the doctor's office, too - and drag all three babies from Chelsea to the Upper West Side via subway.

At the doctor's office: "Yeah...he's just really ear-waxy." As I suspected. Neither kid wants to go back to school, so we taxi back home. But it was such a nice day, I decided to take them to the supermarket and get those cupcake supplies anyway. 10 blocks there and 10 blocks back. Whew!

Now it's 1:30pm and everyone's hungry and tired. PB&J's and naptime.

It's 2:30, and dinner HAS to get made, so I start there. And somehow, wonder of wonders, I manage to make brown sugar meatloaf, red velvet cupcakes, homemade cream cheese frosting AND chocolate ganache, and do all the dishes from the day before and all the cooking....while all three kids napped. Whew.

Suck it, Murphy's Law, I win!

Happy and Healthy Babies - All of Them!

Today was a 'big' day for the DC Plomins.  Bright and early this morning the whole family trekked up to our old stomping grounds, Silver Spring, for a round of doctor's appointments.

Karol - not surprisingly, Karol got a gold star for verbal ability.  The doctor was floored that she was answering questions like "how old are you?" and "are you a boy or a girl?"  I guess those are questions a 3 year old may be able to answer.  She was also impressed with the 6-word sentences she was uttering -but Matt and I know she can easily do 15-word sentences and more!
She's an expert at jumping, but hasn't mastered walking backwards yet - although that's another 3 year old task.

Patrick - Patrick is right on track developmentally, and doing especially well in the walking/climbing arena.  He's off the charts for both height and weight and a very healthy growing boy.  Patrick's language is seemingly ahead of schedule, too, but of course he was too shy to talk to Dr. Fishman at all.  He did manage a 'high five' though.
Patrick got a whopping 3 shots, one of which being the chicken pox vaccine.  The good news is that he won't need any at all at the 18 month check up.  I'm hoping we can squeeze that one in before we have to leave for NYC in July.

Baby #3 - Mommy and baby got a check up today, too.  I'm doing fine, of course, and New Baby Plomin has all the major organs and limbs and whatnot that they check for in the 20 week ultrasound.  And of course we got the opportunity to find out what we're having.  And, as I've been predicting since day 1 - the ultrasound confirmed we're having a boy!  Karol and Patrick are excited to have a baby brother and Matt and I are excited to use pronouns like "he" instead of "it" when referring to "him."

Measurement-wise he is still on track with his original due date of Aug 10, give or take a couple days.  I'm betting he'll be quite an average size, weighing more than Karol did (7 lbs 9 oz) and less than Patrick (9 lbs 3 oz).  It'll be 'fun' to get to know all new doctors just a month before he's born to deliver him in NYC, but we're getting closer to figuring out who that will be now.  Or I should say, Matt is.  I've put him in charge of finding the doc, the hospital and an apartment in NYC.  We'll see how that goes.

The apartment search is still pretty passive - it's still early - but we've got some feelers out.  We're still pretty focused on the West side, hopefully somewhere in our between the West Village and Upper West Side.  I'm not really thinking about that now, though.  For right now I'm just looking forward to tying my shoes without straining and meeting my new little boy, and thanking God we are so very lucky to have such beautiful and healthy children.

So that's the update for now!