Family Update!

I always love it when I agree to come in earlier than I should be here to meet a patient who "can't come at any other time" and then they don't show up to their appointment! Oh well, now you get a family update!

We are doing well, generally speaking. Very busy with working, school, cooking babies, chasing toddlers, and...well, life! You know how it is, I'm sure!
Josh is doing well with school and Ben duties during the day. His load is a bit tougher this year, because he is a senior! If all goes well, he will graduate in early May, which is of course extremely exciting for all of us! However, that means he is taking junior and senior level classes, complete with capstone projects, intense papers, and teachers who think that it's quite reasonable to request hundreds of pages of reading to be completed between class sessions. We aren't sure what changes will or will not occur following graduation, but it is nice to see this chapter drawing to a close. As I am sure he would tell you, being the full time caregiver plus going to school is no easy task! Ben is at a very busy age, which is lots of fun but also not terribly conducive to getting homework done!
Ben is nearly 17 months old now, and such a sweet (and as mentioned, VERY busy!) bundle of joy. He walks and runs very well now, and is starting to climb on things. He definitely loves exploring his world, which is fine, except when we forget and leave certain doors open, and then it can be very messy (toilet paper everywhere, anyone?). He has started offering kisses and offering and requesting hugs and cuddles, which is just heart meltingly precious. He LOVES reading stories, particularly "Barnyard Dance" and "Pajama Time", and will toddle to his room, grab a book, and then toddle back to give it to you, after which he holds up his hands so he come come on your lap. He is talking and signing a bit more as well. He has some phrases that he says ("Where'd he go? There he is!") but is mostly still using single words. He signs to nurse, eat, and for more. He poops on the potty, and sometimes will pee on the potty as well, but that one is MUCH more iffy. I'm not pushing that for right now. If he does, great-if not, I'm not worried about it. I've heard lots of parents say their kid went through a toilet regression when the new baby was born, so I don't want to push him to potty train early and then have that frustration. He can identify his ears, nose, and chin and he is generally a pretty happy little boy. He definitely does want attention all the time-I hope this means he will really enjoy being a sibling once Hadassah is old enough to play with him! He often sleeps through the night now, which is just lovely! The nights when he does wake up, he usually comes over to our bed to cuddle for a while, and then goes back to sleep either in our bed or his bed (he sleeps in a bed that is wedged between our bed and the wall-partly because his room is really cold and partly because I like him being that close if he does need anything in the night or early morning-I'm too lazy/tired to get up and walk across the house!).
Hadassah and I are doing okay. I'm struggling with the requirements of my job-the clinic I run has gotten to a point of busy-ness where it would really be nice for us to have another therapist, but the hiring process takes a VERY long time here. We are still waiting on an approval that was requested several weeks ago, and only once that goes through can we start actually hiring. In the meantime, the patients must be seen, and I am not willing or able to overload myself in terms of numbers I see at once, so I have a tendency to come in early or stay late in order to fit them in. There is a part of me that is hoping things will actually slow down a little around the holidays, and then I will likely be on maternity leave shortly after that (and if we still don't have our other therapist, my boss very well may have to have 2 people come over to cover me). We are now at 29 weeks and all seems to be going very well. Hadassah is more active than I remember Ben being, and my abdomen is definitely more sensitive in that I am feeling a lot of her movements as cramping/pain where I really don't remember that so much with Ben. I am starting to think about/try to mentally prepare for birth again. I am so excited to have another sweet snuggly baby, but it is hard to know how to prepare for the birth process. I was reading through my birth plan from Ben and kind of laughing-I wrote it assuming that I would be in labor for a LONG time, so much of it ended up not applying to his actual birth. I'm not sure whether to make 2 birth plans-1 for another precipitous birth and 1 for a more regular birth-or what. I'll have to think about that one some more. I have laughingly said that maybe it would actually be good for me to go into labor at work, since my doctor's clinic is literally across the hall from mine-the nurses here don't think that is very funny.
Hope you all are doing well! There is our little update. We miss those of you that we don't see regularly!