60 days and counting

My due date is 60 days away. The closer it gets, the further it seems to stretch in front of me. I know the time will pass by and Awesome Pants will be here and it will have felt like the time flew by. But right now, I just want to meet her, to smell the top of her little head, to introduce her to Annabella, to feel my world shift again. She needs to bake awhile longer though; so I guess I'll just have to try to be patient.

In other news, I got an email yesterday about Annabella's transition at daycare. They want to move her up to the two's room starting on her birthday. I'm really nervous about this. She'll be the only toddler from her current room to move up to that room, at least for a couple weeks. The 2 toddlers who are slightly older than her are going to a different room. She might recognize some friends from the other toddler room, but they are quite a bit older than she is. The daycare person tried to alleviate my concerns, but I think she was feeding me a few lines of BS, honestly. "Oh, Annabella plays with Rylee all the time on the playground. And she likes to play with Tatum too." Funny that those are names I never hear when her teachers tell me who she's playing with. And it seems like the original biter (if I narrowed it down correctly) will be following her into her new room. With 3 or 4 biters in her current room and some next door as well, I can't honestly expect Annabella to be isolated from all of them when she moves up to her next room, but a Momma can hope, right? Even with all that, normally I would understand. She is turning 2 after all, and she will need to move up. The resources in the next room will better match her development, and she'll probably have more room to run. But the thing that still really troubles me about this transition is that it will be so darn close to an even bigger transition for her. I'm supposed to pop around 16 days before her birthday. I was thinking our one saving grace would be that her daycare routine would stay stable and help Annabella deal with having a new baby sister. Annabella transitioned from the infant to toddler room sometime in November last year; so I just wasn't expecting for them to want to move her in September. Argh! I've voiced some of these concerns to the admin staff; so we'll see if they give us another option. (I'm further frustrated because we had the option of accepting or declining last year's transition, depending on whether we thought Annabella was ready. This year we've been offered no such option. Grr. And don't even get me started on some of my other daycare admin gripes!)

Whew! I guess I can rant on and on when my Mother Bear comes out.

I don't think there's much more to update about, really. Annabella is continuing to assert her independence. She's choosing to sit at her big girl table rather than on her booster seat, which is a little sad for me because I miss having her at our height at the dinner table. She's screaming her head off before sleep, whether it be naptime or bedtime. She's pointing to let us know where she wants to go at any given time. She's talking more and more, and she gets so excited when she sees a duck or water. She's my little angel, and I couldn't love her more.

I'm updating over my lunch break at work; so I don't have any pictures from home to share. So I'm going to cheat again and give you some more from daycare (again with comments from her teacher):

This morning when we went outside, we saw a praying mantis! Annabella tried so hard to pet him, but he kept crawling away. When he would start to climb up higher, Annabella said "bye!" and waved.

After playing with the bug, Annabella wanted to play in the bushes with her friend Hannah (not pictured, because I feel weird having other kids' pictures up on the blog). They sat together and Annabella and Hannah "talked" to each other like they were having the best conversation! What a great way to learn social skills with others!

I think that last picture is kind of funny, because it shows Annabella's personality. She's obviously hot. You only have to look at her red little cheeks to see that. But I'd bet dollars to donuts that you'd have to drag her inside. After all, she's at her favorite place to be, "ahtsi" (aka, outside).