18 weeks

Last week I got to have another ultrasound at the doctor's office. If we wanted to find out the baby's sex, we could have done so at this point. But we want to be surprised (well, I want to be surprised. Ernie would like to find out, but we made a deal when I was pregnant with Samuel that we'd find out in advance for the 1st baby, and then be surprised for the next. And even though Ernie was hoping I would conveniently forget the deal, I did not!)

Here are 2 pictures from the ultrasound:



Here the baby is sucking his thumb:



The ultrasound tech said that my fluid level looked a little low, so I actually get to go back at the end of this week and have another ultrasound. With Samuel I only got 1 total, and the one this week will be my third, which I think is pretty cool. It's amazing how much detail they can see.

This pregnancy seems to be flying by. I will be at the 1/2 way point next week, which is hard to believe! I feel like I look a lot more pregnant than I did at this point the first time around. We'll have to take some pictures of me and post those soon.

In non-baby news, here is a picture of Samuel at a picnic we went to this weekend. It was raining, but we were under a covered pavillion, so it was fine. This umbrella is not ours - it belonged to one of the other people at the picnic. Samuel LOVED it. It had a button to press to make the umbrella pop out, and a kind of automatic folding option. He ignored all of the other toys at the picnic in favor of this umbrella. He must have opened and closed it 100 times. I'm thinking it might be a good big brother gift to get him in October.

$7 Fun

scooter bought at neighborhood garage sale.......................$5



diego backpack also from neighborhood garage sale..............$1



rocket launcher toy from Target..................................$1



child, so exhausted from not letting any of the
above toys out of his sight all weekend, sleeping until
6:15 am this morning..................................priceless.

Version 2.0 - Arriving October 2009

Some readers of our blog already know this news, but for those of you who don't don't...we are having another baby! I am almost 12 weeks along, due mid-October. I had my first prenatal appointment a week or so ago, and was lucky enough to have an ultrasound (I didn't get one of those with Samuel until I was almost 6 months). The reason I got the ultrasound early is because they couldn't hear the baby's heartbeat with the Doppler. But everything looked and sounded fine on the ultrasound, so we are in good shape. My doctor said maybe I was just a day or two shy of 10 weeks at the appointment, which is when you can really hear the heartbeat with the Doppler.

Here are 2 pictures. It's kind of hard to see more than a tiny peanut at this point, but I still think it's super cool:





Samuel is thrilled about being a big brother and talks about it a lot now. In the beginning he was a little confused, and we had this conversation which made me laugh:

Samuel: "I like babies all the time."
Me: "That's good because we're going to have a baby at our house, close to the time of your birthday."
Samuel: "No mommy! I want a drill!"

Note to self: revise birthday wish list. Take off baby and add drill.

March 2009 - Favorite Things

Here are the things that are favorites around our house right now:



Word Girl. Have you seen this show on PBS? Samuel loves it, and it has a funny narrator who makes jokes only grown ups would understand, so it is fun for all of us to watch. Samuel likes to pretend that he is Word Girl and that Ernie is one of the villains on the show called "The Butcher". Then he will randomly tackle Ernie saying "I'll get you butcher!" Hmmmm....I've never actually seen Word Girl do that on the show, but Samuel seems to think it's lots of fun. I get to be the monkey.




Snacks. If we let him, Samuel would eat these 2 things for every snack and meal, every day. Who needs vegetables anyway?




Construction books. Okay, most definitely not my favorite, but Samuel LOVES any book about construction vehicles. I have learned more about bulldozers, cement mixers, tractors, etc.. in the past 3 years than I thought possible.






The clock. This is probably not Samuel's favorite at the moment, but Ernie and I like it because it is making it a little easier for Samuel to know when to get up each morning. We tell him he can get up when he sees a 6 on the clock. We covered up the minutes part because otherwise I'm sure we would be told there was a 6 when it was 3:16 or 4:26 am.





Chart. For each morning that Samuel does not wake up and come into our room in the middle of the night, he gets a sticker on this chart. Also if he wakes up dry he gets another sticker (he's still working on that.) When the chart is full, he gets to pick from a bag of little toys.

All things Diego. Diego is the other show he can't get enough of right now. If you haven't seen it before, Diego is a show about a boy who rescues animals. He uses all sorts of tools - telescope, rescue pack, field journal, etc... We don't have any of those things, but Samuel is quite imaginative and makes his own - he uses that little red video game as his field journal, he uses Ernie's watch as his video watch, etc... Heaven forbid if you try to put any of these things away. They must be accessible at all times in case of an animal rescue emergency. When we go in the car, they must all come with us. And if one of them happens to fall on the floor (which is quite likely as he is usually trying to hold about 10 things), screaming must commence.

Spring Program

Samuel had his Spring Program at school last week. Last year he just sat on the stage and stared out at the audience - no singing, no hand movements to the songs, nothing. I wasn't sure if he would do the same this year or not. In this first video below, you can see that he was quite happy to sing the songs for us at home. This song is called "My God is So Big" and one verse is sung normally, one in a whisper, one in a shout, etc... I'm not exactly sure how the little dance at the end fits into the song, but maybe he is just preparing for a career on stage with Michael Flatley.

In this second video (taken at the concert) you can see that he is actually singing the song. I didn't manage to get it on tape, but in between the songs (his class sang 2 songs total) he said "mommy can you get me down from here?" The people who heard this thought it was very funny.

Doesn't he look so grown up in his little button down shirt?

Tub time fun

We have a book called Kid Concoctions that has all kinds of neat activities. One recipe in the book is for making paint to use in the bath tub - put shaving cream into an ice cube tray and add a drop of food coloring to each section. We tried this 2 nights ago and Samuel loved it. Here he is painting in the tub:








The paint cleans right up with water, so it wasn't very messy. Samuel liked it so much that last night he asked at 5:30 if it was bath time yet.

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Samuel is able to do so many things by himself now - put on his clothes, get in and out of the tub, climb into the car, etc... The other day I said to him "You are such a big boy. You can do so many things on your own now" and he said "That's because I'm Superboy."

Updates

I know our blog has been sadly neglected lately. This is mostly due to the fact that I have been finishing up a class (medical transcription) and have been giving that my full attention. But I'm happy to say that I took the final exam for the class this week, so I am done! Now I am just awaiting the results of the test, and then I can start looking for a job.

Here are some recent pictures of Samuel. In the first 2 he is wearing what they made at school to hold valentines. It's supposed to be kind of like a little bucket made out of paper plates. It's also apparently a good hat:





In the next few pictures he is shaving in the bathroom, with a little play shaving kit he has (well, play razor, but he is using real shaving cream):

We are working really hard with him on sleep issues lately. For some reason he seems to need less sleep than a normal child. Or a normal adult. Or perhaps a vampire. He wants to wake up SO early every morning and come into our room. We put a clock in his room and told him he cannot get up until he sees a "6" on there, but that only seemed to work for a few nights. And it doesn't seem to matter what time he goes to bed - he still wakes up early. Maybe someday when he gives up his afternoon nap he will sleep later than 5:00 each morning. Until then I'm kind of at a loss for what to do. We've tried leaving him snacks in a bag in his room, in case he wakes up hungry, we've tried telling him he can wake up and play with toys in his room, we've tried locking our door so he can't come in (which only results in him screaming down the hallway and then slamming his door like a tiny teenager.) How do we make him sleep? Any suggestions people have would be appreciated!

Oh, and although the pictures all suggest otherwise, we do occasionally dress him in clothes rather than pajamas.