Vacation at the lake

Almost there!





The beautiful little lake we were at:


An early morning fire:


Stalking squirrels (that's a rifle in Luke's other hand):

Yellow got to come with us, too!


Alex loves to carry Gator around in his mouth.


Tapping the firescreen makes such lovely music!


Watching Mama and Ethan have a splash fight. (There will be no pictures posted of that. Seriously, pictures of me in a swimming suit are bad enough. Pictures of me in a swimming suit five months pregnant? Not gonna happen, folks.)


Ethan and Papa kayaking and canoeing.

Wrasslin'

This was the last day up at the cottage, and the boys were playing while we were getting ready to leave. Alex is very rough-and-tumble, and he loves it when Ethan rough-houses with him!

I have more vacation pictures I'm hoping to post tomorrow. We're settling back into a routine after being on vacation, but we're also getting geared up for school to start (two weeks! yikes!) so things are pretty busy around here at the moment.

Why Alex loves being in the bathroom while I shower

Ultrasound results ...

I had my ultrasound yesterday! The doctor's office called today and told me they wanted to schedule a 4-D ultrasound with a perinatologist (basically a doctor who specializes in high-risk pregnancies and the tests that go along with them).

That sounds bad, but it's actually ok. They wanted to do that for two reasons - they couldn't find the kidneys, and baby has a two-strand cord instead of a three-strand cord. They know the output from the kidneys is normal, which means they're there and working, and a two-strand cord is relatively common and not much cause for concern. So this is just precautionary. Or a profit opportunity, whichever. :) They will do some tests closer to the end of the pregnancy to verify that baby is growing properly with the two-strand cord.

And, the baby is ..................






very active! Quite the little kicker.








What, was there something more you wanted to know? Oh, all right then. Baby is also ..................










A BOY!

Comfort for a Crabby Boy

Alex has been having a generally crabby week. He's decided that the bath mat is a good comfort object, though - he'll go into the bathroom, pull it off the tub, and scoot around with it. While he cries.



(Sorry for the not-so-great picture, but if I had gotten down on his level the dog would have stuck his nose into the camera immediately. Silly beast.)

The Backyard

I'm very thankful for our backyard - lots of room for the boys to run, room for a garden, a playset, a fire ring, camping out in a tent ... But I'm also very thankful for the diligent gardening of a previous owner. Flowers abound, and they add some beauty and femininity that would be sorely missed (at least by me!) if they weren't there.

Test Results

Alex recently had his one-year check up, where they took blood for routine lead and iron tests. We received the following letter with his test results:

Dear Alexander:

Your blood lead level and iron level are both good. Please let your parents know.

Elizabeth Barr, M.D.

Funny doctor.

Otherwise, he's 29 inches tall and weighs 20lbs 8 oz. The doctor pronounced him in perfect condition.

Belated pictures

These pictures are from when the boys and I went to Ginnie's cottage with all their aunts, uncles, and cousins on my side of the family. It was close to Alex's birthday, so we had birthday cupcakes and presents to open. There would have been more pictures - like some of Joe and Angie, Jonas, more of Ethan and Asher, and so on, if my SD card had been in my camera instead of in my computer at home. Sheesh.

Only a boy ...

...would think this is not only an appropriate way to hang up his swimsuit, but a cool one as well:



That's right, folks. He strung the dog's leash along the closet doors and through the drawer pull, then clipped his inside-out shorts to it. Then he proudly came to tell me to come look! Look how I hung up my trunks!

His towel, though, he left on the floor. Then again, he was out of leashes, I guess.

Best Seat in the House

Alex has figured out how to get into his book basket, and now it's his favorite place to sit:

Alex has learned ...

...how much fun it can be to bug your older brother. Here he's trying to steal Ethan's snack. Just listen to him laugh when Ethan gets annoyed!




Just in case anyone was worried, Alex did have his own snack - he'd eaten it already. And I'm sorry the camera work is kind of jumpy; the dog was vying for my attention as I taped it.

Travel Plans

Today Ethan is planning on traveling to Pluto.

Why Pluto, you ask?

Simple.

"On Pluto there is no one to boss me around."

Peanuts

Ethan found an old book of Peanuts comics today, and promptly curled up in a chair to read it:


He was very entertained:


And I think it's a much better way to spend his time instead of dropping things in the toilet. So we were both happy!

You know it's going to be a good day ...

... when, as he's peeing, your child drops half of a Lego man in the toilet and expects you to fish him out ...

... your other child has a messy diaper that is so messy a bath is required to clean him up ...

... and it's not even 7:00 yet!

Happy Monday everyone! :)

Birthday Pictures

Happy Birthday, Alex!

Today Alex turns one ... so Happy Birthday little one!

There will be pictures and another post tomorrow, but tonight we still have birthday pie to eat and presents to open!

Kindred Spirits

These are truly my children.

Slow Posting

I know I haven't been posting much lately; I'm sorry about that for those of you who check in often. Would you like to hear my litany of excuses? (If not, just skip down to the last paragraph!)

I haven't been feeling well, and somehow I have a lot of trouble just getting the basics done when I feel icky all day. You know, things like laundry (my family seems to expect to have clean clothes every day!), meals (they want to eat multiple times a day! and food is particularly hard for me to handle at the moment), and a little bit of fun one-on-one attention for each of the men in my life. Vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, and washing dishes rank up there with things that seem to always need to be done, too.

We've been busy with a number of things. We're a one-car family at the moment - a car I don't drive - so we ALL go to every doctor's appointment. There's been a number of those lately. I'm working on getting things ready for this weekend, when we're going up to Ginnie's cottage to spend Sunday-Tuesday with Luke and Trisha, Mom and Dad, and Joe and Angie and their boys. I'm also trying to get things ready for the adoption shower/birthday party we're hosting for my mom's side of the family at the end of the month. I'm a week late getting invitations out, but I'm having issues with the little maps I have to put in each one. Then it seems like every week we have at least one social obligation from the people at church. It's good to be busy - it just seems like I can't quite keep up!

So you add in the normal running we all have to do - grocery shopping, shopping for household stuff, an occasional trip to the library - and suddenly it's been four or five (or six or seven!) days and I haven't posted anything.

Ok, that's the end of my list of excuses. I may think of more later. :) But just bear with me - the first trimester will be over Saturday, and hopefully soon after that the morning (and afternoon and evening) sickness will ease up. Then I'll hopefully have a little more ambition!

***ETA - Oh! I thought of something else we've been busy with! We planted a garden this year, and I'm trying to keep up with weeding it. Please notice that I did not say I was keeping up with weeding it, just that I'm trying. Back to your regularly scheduled life now.***

Baby Update

I had my first official prenatal appointment last Monday; here's what we found out.

1. We heard the baby's heartbeat! Strong and healthy sounding (and 160 beats per minute for those of you who'd like to try to guess gender with that little tidbit of info).

2. The doctor thinks inducing will be a good idea, and we'll probably go with sometime the week before Christmas. We don't have a date yet; that would seem a little premature. :)

3. I really hate the scale at this office. Even more than I usually hate doctors' office scales.

4. **TMI Warning for any males who may read this blog**
They have cups that are actually big enough to pee into for the necessary urine sample! It's amazing!

I'm the Bubble Man!

We were all outside Friday evening, enjoying a fire and each other's company, when Ethan decided to get out some bubbles. He ran around in glee, waving his bubble wand exuberantly, shouting, "I'm the bubble man! And I'm traveling with the bubbles!"

Alex and Yellow, in particular, were very entertained.

Top 5 Signs that Alex is Teething

1. You step in puddles of drool. Really. It's pretty gross.

2. He pulls his ear.

3. He chews on everything he can fit in his mouth.

4. One or the other cheek gets red.

5. This is the expression you see more than any other:

Standing Tall

Over the last couple days, Alex has started pulling himself up on anything and everything. He's pretty pleased with his newfound ability:



There's so much more he can reach now!




Unfortunately for Ethan, this means that putting his toys on the couch no longer means that they are "safe" from Alex. He's not real happy about that.

Trouble

Ethan never did this. He did lots of other things, but he left the toilet paper alone. Fortunately, the roll was almost empty. Notice Ethan's foot in the last picture; from the way he was laughing, Alex was pretty sure he'd done something really cool. After all, making his big brother laugh is a great accomplishment in Alex's world!

Spaghetti! Yummy!

Reading Accomplishment

After Ethan finished school, we started a reading incentive program to encourage him to continue reading over the summer. Here's his paper chain - one link per book - that he finished in about three weeks. I think I should have made the links smaller!




His reward for reaching the floor with his chain is an ice cream treat. Instead of going to Briq's, he chose to pick a whole box of ice cream treats out of the freezer aisle. He picked a box of mint chocolate crunch drumsticks. He obviously has good taste. :)

We're getting a baby for Christmas!

We're excited to announce that we'll be getting an early Christmas gift this year; sometime the week before Christmas, the newest member of our family will be arriving!

More details will follow after my first doctor's appointment. :)

I'm Crushed!

What does it say for Ethan that he's posing his own pictures with the express intention of asking me to put them on the blog? :)

When it gets too quiet ...

... you have to go look for the baby. And chances are good you'll find him someplace he really shouldn't be - like heading into the bathroom. But doesn't he look pleased with himself?

Springtime Flowers

Sunday, Ethan brought me his first flower of spring - a lovely yellow dandelion. He was very disappointed when it died a day or so later, even though I put it in water. I explained to him how a flower uses its roots to take in the nutrients from the soil that it needs to live, and that when you pick a flower, it is cut off from its roots. So today he brought me another flower, roots and all:


I explained that it still needed the dirt, and gave him a flowerpot to take out to the garden to fill with some dirt. I have a feeling our transplant isn't going to make it, though.




Do you suppose he could have the yard cleared of dandelions by the end of summer?

The Joy of a Good Mess

Ethan was building towers from his Wedgits today, and then knocking them down for Alex's entertainment. Alex, of course, thought this was great. He decided to join in by throwing the blocks once they were knocked down. Ethan, in turn, thought that was a great idea. Of course, he found a way to improve upon it - he got all of his pattern cards that go with the Wedgits, and threw those all over. They had a grand time:



I told Ethan that the two of them were mess makers. He laughed uproariously, and shouted, "We're friends! We're brothers! We're prothers!"

And laughed some more.

It was a good afternoon for my two "prothers".