A few days to go

Before the end of the week I will finally be giving birth to baby George. It doesn't feel all that momentous right now. I am trying not to have any expectations about what it's going to be like to have two kids, or what kind of baby George will be, or how Olivia will react to him. No expectations = no disappointment.

Olivia has been really sick this week since Jason flew out on Tuesday morning, with a cold and a nasty sounding cough. She had a temperature first, and was a little bit lethargic for a few days and every time she lies down to sleep her nose becomes a snotathon. She refuses to learn to blow her nose (I can't do it! she says) and continues to try to breathe through her nose and then starts coughing due to the snot in her throat. I have been getting even less sleep as I lie awake listening to her cough and snore. I haven't felt as tired as I expected I would, I'm used to the interrupted sleep by now. I'm now coming down with the cold. Olivia has been coughing all over me the past week so it's hardly unexpected that I would catch it.

Jason caught the flu at work a couple of weeks ago and also this cough that Olivia has. He was sick from Saturday to Tuesday at work and then flew back to Perth. I couldn't risk catching the flu so we arranged for him to stay at my friend Krissy's, while she was at work, until he wasn't contagious. Unfortunately he still had the cough/cold when we picked him up Saturday. I wouldn't let him kiss me, but he couldn't help but be all over Olivia so he gave it to me via her anyway. This year seems to have been a bad one for colds and flus in Perth. All my friends have had sniffles throughout the year. I've hardly seen any friends because Olivia has had colds nearly the entire time and I haven't wanted to pass them on. In hindsight, would it have made a difference? I get annoyed when other people's kids give my kid their cold, though, so I don't want to do the same.

I'm just hoping I don't get as sick as Olivia. I think since I can blow my nose it probably won't be as bad. I think it will suck having a phlegmy cough whilst having to push a baby out though. All this sickness is kind of putting a dampener on my enthusiasm for being a mother of two.

In the meantime, Olivia talks more than ever and is the epitomy of cute. She has an amazing array of vocabulary and is constantly adding new words to her repertoire. I have to keep reminding myself that she's only two years old. Two and three months tomorrow. She's very fussy about the clothes she wears, there are certain things she loves, and a lot of things she doesn't want to wear. I sometimes let her choose not to wear things, but other times insist and after a short cry about it she gets over it. She is also a super fussy eater. A few weeks ago she tried orange for the first time because I was eating it, and she likes it but she will only suck the juice out, not eat the pulp. She does the same with apples.  She eats lots of bananas and strawberries, though she seems to be going off strawberry now. She likes cheese sandwiches but often only wants plain bread. She used to eat lots of cheese and couldn't get enough of it, now she only eats it sometimes. She will eat raw carrot, capsicum, lettuce and broccoli stems but only so far as taking a bite and chewing and then spitting it out without swallowing. She loves roast chicken, lamb, fish and steak though, and will swallow the meat. Sometimes she asks me for scrambled egg but won't eat it once it's served. She likes plain greek yoghurt but will just dip her finger in it and lick the yoghurt off to eat it. She has started doing the same with gravy. She doesn't like gravy on her meat, mixing foods together results in her not even trying them. She likes plain pasta and noodles, no sauce, and mainly just the spiral pasta curls. I guess that is quite a range of food that she will eat, but I don't worry about it, generally. She is still drinking formula and I figure the vitamins in that make up for any shortfalls in her diet. Oh, I forgot to mention she loves cake, waffles, pancakes and cookies. A lot. Will eat plenty of that. Takes after her mother, in that way.