Last post of the year

Well for the last post of this year, I figured I would give a little blurb about everyone:

Emmaline - She is constantly amazing us with what she is learning and *remembering* at school. Lately her favorite topic is what makes a pattern and explaining patterns like "ABAB" or "ABCABC". It's pretty cool. She is in such a fun age where she has so many interesting insights and fun things to say.

Liliana - Well as I posted before, her speech is really coming along. She is also developing a really sweet heart. She is very hot and cold. One moment she can be mad about something, but then the next moment she will wrap her arms around you and give the tightest hug, and sweetest kiss and say, "I love you!" She loves to cuddle but also has so much energy and finds so much thrill in everything she does. We also recently night-trained her and she is doing so well with that. With her strong spirit we didn't want to push the issue so we waited for awhile from when we day-trained her. She has been dry the last two nights without even having to get her up in the night to take her to the bathroom.

Imogene - Idgie is also amazing us with her speech. It is soft and quiet, but she is now saying three words sentences and popping out with new words everyday. Her new fun word is "Stinky" which means anything to do with her diaper or diaper changes. She loves following around the other girls and copying and getting involved in whatever it is that they are doing. She also learned how to open doors a few days ago!

AJ - AJ got an end of year raise and got good reviews at work so we are happy with that!

Bethany - I am busy creating a human life. That has to be an impressive accomplishment - right?

Rating: 5 Lollipops

24 weeks

I had my 24 week appointment today. My OB said everything is looking good. She said that upon further review of my last ultrasound, that we are actually having another girl!!!

Kidding, kidding!!!

What she did say is that the second reviewer of the ultrasound didn't think that the kidneys were actually overly enlarged. They were large - but not outside of "normal" range. So that is a good thing. They will still do another ultrasound in another month or so just to check the umbilical cord. They weren't able to get a good look last time to verify that it has three vessels.

My OB also agreed with me that I could skip my 1 hour glucose test next time, and skip straight to the 3 hour test. I always fail the 1 hour so it made no sense to me at all to have to waste my time doing it. So in another month I will being doing that!

And here is a 24 week picture!

Rating: 3 Lollipops

Happy Anniversary!

AJ and I went out to celebrate our 9th Anniversary! It isn't actually our anniversary until January 3 but that happens to be both a Sunday and Liliana's birthday. Not to mention the fact that AJ's mom is here visiting so it made sense to just go out a few days early. We put the kids to bed early and then went out to dinner. It was nice to get to spend some time alone together. I can't believe we are starting in on the last year of our first decade of marriage!

Rating: 5 Lollipops

The Movies

Emmaline when to a birthday party today and for the very first time ever - she got to go to a movie! Can you believe we've never taken any of them to a movie yet?

We went and saw The Princess and the Frog. It was a cute movie and Emmaline declared, "I liked everything but the evil parts!" She didn't even know about previews and all that so I had to explain to her that they were "commercials" before the movie. "But mom, I HATE commercials!"

Rating: 3 Lollipops

Endings

Well today was the last day of speech for Liliana. She will turn three in a few days and no longer qualify. Her therapist had a little party. They made a craft, had a snack, and played. It is amazing to think about how different Lil is from a year ago!

Remember when I first got the phone numbers to call?

And when I decided not to call?

And then when I decided to call after all?

How she was only saying 35 words a year ago?

And when she finally had her evaluation?

We have come such a long way since then! Her speech is still "mushy" but she is talking up a storm! I definitely no longer have concerns about her vocabulary and she is using more advanced sentences too. It really is phenomenal the difference!

We are so proud of you Liliana!

Rating: 5 Pixie Dust

Christmas

Well I'd say Christmas was a success! On Christmas Eve, we had a floor picnic of finger foods and watched The Polar Express. The girls loved it. There was fruit, veggies, crackers, meats, steak kabobs, tater tots, cocktail weinies, and many other yummy things.






Then we told the story of Christ's birth, the girls put out their stockings, and they rushed off to bed. While they were sleeping, Santa came and here is what he brought them:

Idgie - Cardboard blocks, Magna Doodle, and Books



Liliana - Sit and Spin, Tinkerbell Movie, and books

Emmaline - Camera, MedicAlert Bracelet, Piano Books

And here are some other pictures of the girls opening presents:

The funny part of the day is that Emmaline and Lil spent the day playing with the blocks nad magnadoodle, and Idgie spent a good part of the day playing with the Sit and Spin. It's like the gifts went to the wrong kids! Other hits of the day came in the stockings. They each had a stocking filled with fabulous socks. There were Disney Princess, Sesame Street, Aliens, Hello Kitty, Tinkerbell, and more. Then there were also some puppy purses with the stockings. Basically stuffed dogs with a zipper on the back and a strap. It is funny how the simplest things can be so loved! Idgie got a Yorkie, Emmaline a Pug, and Liliana a Beagle.
Instead of gifts from each other this year, we got the entire family the Wii Fit Plus. We are very happy with it. Emmaline spent two hours running in place, while playing a bicycling game! How can you argue with that? Lil and Idgie get into it as well and stand on the floor and run in place too!

For Christmas dinner we had ribs again - and did NOT have a fire or order Chinese. A success!

Rating: 5 Candy Canes

Getting Behind

Well I haven't blogged for most of this month and have now gone back and added a few posts and backdated them to put them in order. So you might want to scroll back through the month of December in case you were worried you might have missed something!

Cookies Cookies!

Well it is that time of year again to make sugar cookies for Santa! Mostly it helps keep the kids occupied for the day while they hurry up and wait to go to bed.

The girls of course loved eating the dough and I let them go wild with the frosting. I swear Emmaline's cookies are more frosting than actual cookie!

Safe Sugar Cookie Recipe HERE

Santa can come now! We're ready!

Rating: 24 Sugar Cookies

Christmas Sunday

In our church we don't have special services on Christmas Eve or Day. The Sunday before Christmas is the one we use to have our Christmas Program for the year. The entire program was performed by the choir along with scripture reading of the Christmas story, and some congregational hymns as well.
During the rest of the year, the musical numbers at church are generally much more quiet and reverent, but for Christmas we pull out all the stops. I was involved in helping to accompany the choir on the piano. Several of the pieces involved a piano duet + organ + either flute or violin (so four of us playing). Of course in order for the piano to be heard along with the pipe organ, you have to lift the lid all the way AND pound your heart out! So few songs (in or out of church) do you get to do that. Nothing says fun and powerful like getting to put your whole heart and energy into playing something like Joy to the World! It was a ton of fun.
Now I just have to wait to get to do it again next year.

Rating: 4 Lollipops

Kindergarten Concert

Emmaline had her Kindergarten Christmas Program today! It was a short little program during the day. They just sang three songs. It was super cute though - mostly because they kept messing up and getting out of sync with the music! Afterward they went to the cafeteria and made gingerbread houses. Emmaline's of course was all made from safe graham crackers, frosting, and candy. YUM!

Rating: 1 Gingerbread house!

Dressing Up

You might remember that when Lil was the same age as Idgie, that she also liked to dress up. That at least was in the summer. Idgie has found a love of dressing up now as well - but it is in her winter gear!

Also, a few months ago, Lil's speech therapist did an evaluation on Idgie and determined that she was slightly behind on her speech. Well not anymore! Idgie is talking up a storm and even saying phrases like "I want socks" "I want boots" "Watch show" and so on. So no worries there anymore!

Rating: 4 Pixie Dust

Christmas Lists

Last night we went to the Christmas party at church. Emmaline was completely excited to go because she knew Santa was going to show up! She had a list all prepared of exactly what she wanted to tell him. When her turn came she sat on his lap and said, "You have three choices of what I want. I want a new bracelet (MedicAlert), a camera, or a yo-yo." I loved that she gave him a choice! When I asked Lil what she was going to tell Santa that she wanted for Christmas, she told me, "candy." Smart girl! However, when her turn actually came she started saying, "no! no! no!" so she didn't sit on his lap afterall! Idgie of course is luckily still too young to care!

Rating: 3 Candy Canes

Measuring Time

Some people measure time by minutes, or hours, or days, or weeks, or months. Not in our house. We measure time by birthdays. It all started with teeth brushing. To make sure Emmaline's teeth were brushed for a decent amount of time, we started singing "Happy Birthday" while she brushed. We would just sing it to whoever had a birthday next in the family. But not just our family - we include grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins as well. Not only is she now pretty good at telling you the order of birthdays in our family (not the exact date - but the order) but she has begun to measure time by it. "Mom how many birthday's until our new baby comes?" (seven) Well today we were talking about how it is Uncle Jeremy's birthday. She asked whose birthday was next (Uncle Dwight) and then whose birthday is after that? When I responded that Jesus' Birthday was after that she began to dance around the room singing: "One more birthday until Christmas!" and then ran to the office saying, "Daddy, Daddy, good news! One more birthday until Christmas! I love holidays!"

Rating: 3 Candy Canes

Thoughts on motherhood and other things

So last night, AJ had his work Christmas Party. We've never been able to make it in the past so we made every effort to be able to attend this year. We even hired teenage babysitters - something we have never done before! The party was held at a hotel and had an open bar and catered dinner. The whole bar thing isn't our scene since neither of us have any experience with drinking. Luckily, I asked around weeks ago to friends and found out that they usually have juice and soda at the bar as well, so that worked out okay. Drinking is such a foreign concept to us that we didn't even know that much so I was glad I had asked around! Dinner was "fancy" in that it tried too hard to be fancy - but the truth is it was so "fancy" it wasn't good and everything was actually really hard to eat politely without making a mess! Maybe we're just not high-class enough to enjoy that kind of thing - I don't know! We're not even picky eaters!

Anyway, we concluded at the end that while the party was free, the amount that we had to spend to get babysitters in order to be able to go out, would have been much better spent in a multitude of other ways (like takeout from Red Lobster and cuddling on the couch watching a movie).

Oh and what does all this have to do with motherhood? Well it was a fancy party so we had to dress up. That means that I had to actually do my hair which involved pulling it out of the messy ponytail that I wear every single day, and actually styling it! Idgie apparently has never really seen me with my hair down because it genuinely scared her! She would look at me really weird and nervouslike, and then go to AJ. She wouldn't touch me at all! Apparently I don't get out of my motherhood uniform nearly often enough!

Rating: 1 Fireball (for a lame evening)

The Belly - Halfway

Well amongst all the excitement about finding out the gender - I didn't post my belly shot! Here it is at 20 weeks!

Rating: 1 Giant Gumball

And the results are in!

Congratulations to the 57% of you that guessed boy! It looks like we have big changes coming to our household. Emmaline jumped up and down when we told her and said, "A brother! I've never had one of those before!"

Overall the ultrasound went well. There was one minor concern. The kidneys are slightly enlarged. Apparently it usually resolves itself but in a small percent of cases it could require surgery after the birth. The OB said it certainly wasn't anything to stress over. Apparently this is a much more common problem in boys than it girls - which helps to confirm to me that the turtle we saw on the ultrasound really is a turtle. I will get a few more ultrasounds through the pregnancy just to keep an eye on things.

Maybe I should rethink the overwhelmingly pink theme of the blog ...

Here's our little guy:

Rating: Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails