Thursday, December 19, 2013

20 week ultrasound - it's a...

I had my 20 week ultrasound on Tuesday. We got to spend some time watching baby wiggle around and kick in there.


It very much reminded me of my ultrasound with Ethan. Baby was in the exact same spot, and we had a hard time getting some of the images that the ultrasound tech needed. Ethan never moved from that spot, requiring another follow up ultrasound to see some of his heart. So she had me go to the bathroom and move around a bit and baby moved too, and we finished up pretty quickly. The last thing she did was check the sex of the baby. Took a few minutes of pushing and prodding, baby was scrunched up and legs locked together. I made the comment that it was beginning to make me think it was a girl, with Ethan it was pretty easy for even me to tell he was a boy. She agreed with me, that she was starting to think it was a girl too. Then we finally got a good shot and confirmed that it looks like a girl!!

We're pretty surprised, and getting used to the idea of dresses, ruffles and bows invading our house :) Ethan's been saying that it was a girl all along, so I don't think he's as surprised as mommy and daddy. We're all pretty excited to know!

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

18 weeks

Ethan always has lots of hugs and kisses for baby. 

Monday, November 25, 2013

17 weeks

Feeling plenty of kicks and nudges. I'm really curious as to the gender of this little one. This pregnancy has been really different in many ways, so lots of people keep telling me it's probably a girl. Ethan wants it to be a girl. We hopefully will find out mid December. 

Monday, November 18, 2013

Christmas started a little early around here

This weekend we got out our Christmas tree! Ethan was so unbelievably excited to set it up. After the decorating work was done on Sunday, we popped open a bottle of sparkling cider and let him have a wine glass along with us to drink from. We all said "cheers"... a lot... we gave a few toasts, and he did as well. His toasts turned into prayers, which was really cute, telling God what a wonderful day it was, asking for health for me and baby, telling God how old each of us are, etc. Before bedtime we turned off all of the lights and sat in front of the tree with a snack. He was absolutely beaming all day long. What a fun time of year for little ones :)

Then today he pulled a dough ornament off the tree that we made together a few years ago, and asked if we could make more ornaments like that one. So we did, we made 6 ornaments this morning and then painted them after rest time. I told Steve that at this rate we will run out of Christmas activities long before Christmas gets here. Steve didn't think that would be a problem.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Monday, November 4, 2013

Happy Halloween!

Excited to be dressing up as a dragon

Ready to be done with pictures and heading out to the candy

Monday, October 28, 2013

names

Ethan just told me that if the baby is a girl he thinks we should name her Helfin. If it's a boy then he would like to name him Peetin. I told him we'd keep those under consideration.

Monday, October 21, 2013

what I've been up to lately

Little heart beating away at 8 weeks

5 weeks

8 weeks

12 weeks

After 2.5 years of praying for another child, over 10 months of waiting on a list at an adoption agency, we were pretty excited to say the least. I've been super sick. Medicine is helping some, but it's been rough. Even so, we are so happy to be welcoming another little one into our family, due around May 5. And Ethan is also over the moon excited to be a big brother :) He talks to his baby brother or sister, kisses my tummy, and keeps track of what size fruit/veggie the chart we have says his little sibling is similar to.

corn maze

We broke out our winter gear, and headed to the nearby giant corn maze! We had a blast, and thankfully the nasty weather held off until we were ready to head home. 












Tuesday, October 15, 2013

video games

So Ethan's gotten super into a couple of games either on my phone or the iPad recently. I guess we're non-traditional in our views of video games because I think it's really neat to see his coordination and problem solving skills improve through playing games like these. The really funny thing is that it's translated into real life and sometimes I think he thinks he's in a real-life video game in his mind.

A couple of weeks ago Ethan and I picked up Steve at the convention center downtown. Ethan told me he had to go potty and so he and Steve ran into the convention center quickly to find a bathroom while I went across the street to parking a lot and wait for them. They ran down the hall, went potty, ran back through the hall and down the street, crossed at the light, ran to the car and buckled in. Ethan gets buckled in and says "whew, that was a really tricky level!".

Then a few nights ago we were starting to get him ready for bed and I told him to come get his teeth brushed. He replies "but I still have 20 more lives left!". No dude, you don't. It's 8:30 and we're tired. :)

dreams

Lately Ethan's been talking about dreams that he's had, but I've always gotten the impression that he's just telling me stories that he's making up, and that he's not quite certain what a dream actually is. I know he's had scary dreams that he's waken up to, and started talking incoherently about monsters or someone being mean to him. I've tried to explain that it was just a bad dream, and didn't really happen.

This morning was the first time I've been convinced that he's telling me about an actual dream. He told me that he had a dream where he was riding a bike with "the other guy" and that he got off his bike and the other guy rode over his bike and up the two.. tube? (didn't quite catch that part). Then he had to get his bike and fix it, and then he kept riding up the two/tube with the other guy.

Not the most exciting dream, but it sounded legit to me! He brought it up again later and then asked me if I had that dream too. I told him about a dream that I had the other night and he seemed really curious that we didn't have the same dreams. So fun to watch him figure it all out.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

stuff he's said

Lately Ethan thinks that it's his job to take care of me. He loves to brush my teeth, help me put makeup on, etc. The other day I said out loud, mainly to myself, "boy, my head's really starting to hurt" and Ethan jumped right in with "it'll be ok mom. I'll make you some coffee". Funny how he's picked that up!

This morning as I was trying to get ready he told me that he didn't want me to get ready -- he wanted me to watch cartoons with him. I asked him if I should stay stinky with crazy hair. He ran into the bathroom telling me, "Oh, I'll get you your deodorant. Then you won't be stinky anymore." Problem solved, no shower needed for me :)

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Steve's birthday

Ethan and I made minion cupcakes for Steve's birthday. Ethan is really into the Despicable Me movies lately. He loved the bad minion cupcakes (the purple ones) and wasn't so crazy about the good minions (the twinkies) because they had no frosting. Surprise.

 


We had cupcakes and ribs for lunch and then after rest time, Ethan and I went to a friends house to play and let daddy have the night off to do whatever he wanted to do. I think we all had a blast :)


Ethan couldn't get enough of the cars. Might have to look into finding one of these for him.





Monday, July 22, 2013

our 10th anniversary trip




Steve and I took a couple of nights away to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Theses are the only pictures I got of our weekend. We had a lot of relaxing fun. 

Saturday, July 20, 2013

busy summer days

Seeing Sid (from the movie Ice Age) at the Mall of America. Ethan said to him "you're my favorite", and regularly asks to go to the MOA now.


Dinner date with mom


Excited to be holding his own sparklers

"helping"

Awesome fort that stayed up for quite a while

Ethan got really into picking our peonies this year




First movie theater experience. He LOVES going to movies now!

Big boy bike

Swimming lessons. he's doing a great job this summer!

Fave part about the splash park, the xylophone. Go figure.


Park with Saige! Singing and dancing.

Fishing with daddy!


Our park had a party one night and Ethan went with a friend. They got their faces painted, hair colored, and got to go in a fire truck and police car. It was a serious fun :)

Independent back float with a noodle!

So many of our mornings are spent at the beach. We seriously could just live there, Ethan never wants to leave.


Lots of snappers in our lake

Making friends at the beach


Daddy joined us at the beach one evening