It's a......

Surprise! John and I were so excited this morning to go to our "big" ultrasound and really get a good look at NewBaby. We were not planning on finding out the gender of NewBaby during the appointment. However, we were not planning on finding out with William either and curiosity got the best of me that day. Today I held it together and managed very well through the appointment. The ultrasound tech even told me to look away while she examined an area that would have given the gender away....and I didn't peek. John says he didn't either.

While it was fun and exciting to actually get to see NewBaby for more than a minute at a time, the ultrasound technician made the experience totally different. This one was all business. She explained what she was doing and what she was looking at without stopping for any extras. Bummer.

We left William's ultrasound 2 years ago with roughly 15 pictures. Today we left with 2 - NewBaby is already neglected! Here are the only pictures we got:

Baby's head is on the right side of the screen, the spine and lower body is on the left.
The face is in the center of the picture and the body (with ribs) is on the left side of the frame.


PS Sometime this week I'll update you on our gender theories. You won't want to miss it!

There was a Farmer...

Who had a dog and Bingo was his name-o!

For some reason this year, we are super popular and have been invited to at least 6 different Halloween/Fall type parties over the last few weeks. We weren't able to go to all of them, but I think I am officially Halloweened out. This weekend was a party that were we able to attend schedule wise - although we considered staying home because the invite threatened if we didn't arrive in our own costume, one would be provided. So, here is what we came up with:

The farmer and his dog

Mama and her pumpkin - very unoriginal as I was a pumpkin when I was pregnant with William also. (PS If you tried out the link- WOW what a difference ten weeks and about twenty extra pounds makes!)

William was fascinated with the pumpkin on my belly. He could not be distracted away from the eyes, nose and mouth - followed by an exclamation "Mama pumpkin!"
When we got home, I finally let William have some fun with the pumpkin face. I think he would have sat here all night rearranging the nose, eyes and mouth.
And just because it is funny....running away from Daddy.

This Halloween party was worth the effort though. Very cool decorations and food. Marinara sauce in a fountain is very...red and bubbly. Quite the sight.

Ghosts from the Past

Ugh. John and I have spent close to 5 hours so far this weekend dealing with the Ghosts of our Past. We have now been working on finishing the basement for over 2 years and there are some boxes that have sat in our basement for a very long time. We've been so focused on the basement that dealing with the stuff piling up hasn't been a priority. Now we have so much stuff, we don't know what we have or even worse we can't find what we do have and buy the same thing over again because we can't find it. We both agree now time and I think both of us have a headache from it. Poor us. Here are a few things we have learned:


1. We never need to purchase file folders, hanging file folders or plastic page protectors again in our lifetime - even if we're careful.

2. The same thing is true of binders

3. It is way easier to tell John to go through his stuff and reduce it than to actually do it to my own stuff. My stuff is "special". (it isn't really - it is just hard to figure out what is really important to keep).

4. I need to start dealing with paper items right away in the future. I have SO many papers in boxes downstairs that I'm not sure why I'm keeping. Yet, many of them have been in boxes and moved from place to place across the country for the last 7 years (! Eeeee! 7 years!). I've kept them for this long - I guess they must be important?

5. Gift wrap is also not an item we should ever buy again. Same goes for bows.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Can you believe he has all parts of his costume on AND is smiling all at once? We had a pretty fun Halloween which kicked off on last weekend. We were invited to three different Halloween parties last weekend along with a big garage sale I've been working on and a work picnic for John. Busy! But fun! We carved pumpkins and ate lots of candy (I'm sure my Dr. appointment is not going to be good this year with all the candy I've eaten this week). We don't have any pictures because it really isn't safe to have one person working with a sharp knife and the other adult have their hands busy with a camera with the very curious two year old in between.

Tuesday night was the school district event called Safe Halloween. The bigger kids put together games and fun stuff inside for the littler ones to play with in a safe environment. We got their a little later than we would have liked and it was CRAZY. I think last year the attendance for the event was somewhere in the thousands and I would believe it. It is a lot of fun - but WAY too many people for us. It was fun to get William all dressed up and do a trial run with the costume - even if we were only there for about 12 minutes total.

Walking in with Daddy - what a cute puppy...even if he isn't house trained yet.
Playing Candyland with the Builders Club from West Middle School -Mama is trying to help and all William is tryin' to do is get to the pretty girl at the end with the piece of candy!
With Mama, but checking out all the other kids in crazy costumes.

Tonight was a GORGEOUS night for Halloween. The temperatures were in the 70's with a little breeze. Absolutely perfect! Time got away from us so we didn't get the afternoon pictures outside that I wanted with better light, but we still managed to get a few good ones of William.

William is in love with pumpkins. He got this one earlier in the week at the Child watch area at the gym and has been carrying it around ever since. I'm not sure how he is going to take it when the pumpkin has to go away...
Still carrying around the pumpkin

Look - another picture with a smile!
It is getting a little more challenging to be carrying William around now due to our other little pumpkin I'm carrying around (I know, I know. It is only going to get worse). I like to give John a hard time about this when we are out running errands: Why do I have to carry BOTH kids? Can't he carry one?


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

PS I was going to paint his nose black to complete the costume - I think it would have been cuter. However, two important factors were holding me back. 1) He hates have stuff on his face and it would have been a huge mess. 2) I am L-A-Z-Y and didn't ever go to the store to pick up any face paint.

You All Could have Told me

All day I've been grumpy because it isn't Friday. At some point during the day yesterday, I decided it was Thursday and had several important discussions with John about what we needed to do to be prepared for the Halloween holiday on Friday. He didn't clue me in (probably because he didn't realize) until late in the afternoon that is was only Wednesday instead of Thursday.

I guess it went on long enough my brain is still confused - and grumpy about it not being the weekend tomorrow.

21 months old

Today William is 21 months old. The leaves are changing colors and falling off the tree in our backyard - so we thought there might be some good pictures to take outside in celebration. We did a similar shoot last year about this time also (click here or here for last year's pictures). This year was more challenging for several reasons: because our neighbor has a newish dog that likes to do his "business" in our yard - yuck and William is now WAY more mobile than last year. Maybe at this time next year we'll have a kid who likes to hold still for a change. I'm not super happy with our results so I can almost guarantee that we'll be back out again in the next week or so to try and get a few more fall pictures of the big boy.

Weeeeeee! Leaves are fun!
I have to shut my eyes because Mama is throwing leaves at my face!
Enough sitting! I want to run down the hill in our backyard.
And now back up the hill again!
And now it is time to stop and smell the flowers (for all you green thumbs out there - I need some serious advice about what to do with the mess I've made out of these Zinnias. They are HUGE, each plant is over 3 feet tall with massive flowers. They aren't strong enough to stand up on their own so they fell on top of everything else and have about managed to kill everything with their bigness. Oh yeah, and I planted 8 of them in a smallish area. Please advise how to deal with minimum work involved. I promise if your advice involves a shovel, it ain't happening.)
In constant motion...but so happy!
You're right Mama, it is fun to throw leaves!

New Words

William has been picking up words like crazy over the last few weeks. Many of them seem completely random (pocket?) to me, but I guess that is just how the toddler brain works.

However, a handful of the words I absolutely certain he doesn't understand. He is just repeating them after we say them. It is not only time to start watching what we say, but the meaning behind what we say as well...

Here are two new additions from this week alone:

1) I was getting dressed and came out of the bathroom to get a second (and third) opinion about my shirt. Clothes have been difficult lately because most of my normal stuff is too small and very unflattering. However, most of the maternity clothes I have are way too big and also unflattering. So, my question was "Fat or pregnant?" John carefully studied the outfit and declared it pregnant. William was sitting with John and looked up and said "Pregnant". Does he know what it means? Absolutely not.

2) William and I were in line at the store last week and William was having a great time pitching the items within his reach out of the cart and onto the floor as fast as I could get them back into the cart. When he ran out of items, he then started pulling items off of the conveyor belt and throwing them onto the floor- which were not ours. All of my distractions (toys and snacks) in my purse were not helping in the least and also ended up on the floor. Laughing (because the other option was crying), I looked at William and said "You sure are trouble today". He looked at me for a second and then nodded his head before saying "Trouble".