Ultrasound.

Finally....after like 12 tries I got the thing to scan. So as you can see, it's a boy! It was funny because the woman stuck the ultrasound thing on my belly and I immediately saw the "boy parts", as she labeled them. She looked at me and asked again if I wanted to know what we were having. I said, "yes, and it looks like a boy to me!" She laughed and said that I was right. We were in the ultrasound room for like 30 minutes while she tried to get a good picture of his face. He kept hiding his face with his arms and moving around so we couldn't see him. He wasn't shy about showing us everything else though. Ha! The woman had me turn over a couple of times to see if she could get a better look, and I finally just had to go to the bathroom to see if that would help. It did for a short time and she was able to get a couple of face pics. She said that he was moving around a ton and was having a hard time keeping up with him. I still don't think he is as active as Anna at this time. But he's not a still baby by any means.

Heredity Sucks.

Yesterday a cold front came through in the afternoon and by that evening it was pretty cold and windy. Anna has has a few sniffles because of all the dust flying around and, as always, demanded on going outside after dinner. So we put some warm clothes on and her hat and she and Daddy went out to throw some acorns. She loves it for some reason. Of course, she then needed to run back and forth across the yard many times...in the cold, windy air. I new what was about to happen. Anytime Anna starts to run and play a little too hard she starts to cough. A little thing called Exercise Induced Asthma. I have it and struggled with it anytime I ran, played basketball games, etc. One who has it, knows what it's like and knows what it looks like. My dad also has asthma, worse than me, and not just exercise induced....as does one of my sisters. So I knew there was a good chance Anna may have it too. The cold weather last night of course did not help her breathing and just as soon as I saw that she was running around, I called her and Daddy inside. She immediately started coughing and coughed so much and hard enough that she threw up right as they got inside the house. Yep, that's what happens with this. So there you have it. A non-medical diagnosis. That's what she has. There's not much you can do, I don't think. Just make her slow down a little every now and then. Heredity sucks. (picture taken before she puked..)

Chocolate, Chai, and Cheetos.

So, when I was pregnant with Anna, I was all about eating anything healthy. This wasn't because I was a super health freak, it's just all I wanted. It made me feel better to eat fruit and veggies...it felt clean going down if you can understand that. Well, this time around has been a little different. I still want all the good stuff (meaning the healthy stuff), but I want other things too. Like Cheetos! Those are SO good. Daddy suggested that I get the Baked Cheetos since I was wanting them so much. Anna and I have eaten only 2 bags so far. In the last few months I guess...so that's not really that many. But sometimes I just want some Cheetos. Next thing that I don't think I had much at all of while pregnant with Anna was Chocolate (it must be capitalized). I need something Chocolate almost every day. I usually get it by cramming some semi-sweet Chocolate chips in each bite of a banana or something like that. So it's really not that bad of a snack. Antioxidants right?! Ha! And lastly, Chai lattes. I've had about 4 today. If you've never had a chai latte, go get one. It's freakin' good. I think of it only as a cool weather drink. I've never had egg nog, but I think it may be a lighter version in taste, without the eggy part. SOOO GOOOD... So there you go. My randomness for the day. If those of you who haven't seen me during this pregnancy, don't worry. I'm not as big as a house as you might have imagined with this blog post. I've gained about 5ish pounds so far and am more than half way done. But wish me luck that that 5ish pounds doesn't turn into 70 in lightning speed!

New game.

Anna has started a new game. She rounds up all the "pi-whoas" (pillows) off the couch and chairs a a few from the bedrooms and piles them all in front of the blue chairs in the living room. She then climbs on the blue chairs and counts to a random number...usually starting at 3. So when you hear, "3-4-5-6!!!" you know to either get out of the way or brace yourself for a crash. She jumps off the chair as high as she can and onto the pile of pillows. Sometimes a blanket makes a good cape. We'll let you know how much a 2 year old's broken arm costs soon. HA!

Rescue?

The box of washable (thank goodness!!) markers said "Creativity to the Rescue". We've got the "creativity" part down, now I'm still waiting on that "rescue".

Note to self: don't leave a 2 year old unattended for any length of time with markers.

Happy Cake!

Anna is TWO! We had a family birthday party on Saturday and she had a blast. It was so different than her first birthday since she could really enjoy lots of people singing to her, tearing into her "happy cake" and really liking it this time, blowing out the candles herself (without the planned practice session that I totally forgot to have with her), and opening her own presents! Here are some of the fun moments.

She must have come up with "happy cake" on her own. I thought Aunt Jenni taught it to her since that's where she gets lots of her cute words. But Jenni denies it and I know I've never said it. She calls anything resembling a cake or cupcake "happy cake". This is the reason for "happy cake" written on her personal cakes. I looked at those pictures today and thought I could've totally gotten more creative with decorating her cakes...but what's the use? She ripped that thing to shreds and ate most of it! I went to clean up her mess and looked for the missing chunks of cake on the floor and in her chair. She really ate most of it!

She also got some of the coolest gifts ever! Grammy and Papa Joe gave her some sweet new shoes (Nike shox-size 8! and some nice ones), some cute clothes and pjs, and some Wonder Pets DVDs. Nana took her Sunday clothes shopping and got her some super cute dresses since she has grown out of everything lately, and Nana and Papaw also gave her a mini Ikea chair for her to watch all those Wonder Pets episodes in. Aunt Jenni gave her some Aquadoodle accessories and some cute shirts for the fall and winter. Daddy and I gave her an Aquadoodle mat that mounts on the wall and a little travel color Aquadoodle. I wish I invinted that thing. I'd be a millionaire. And Krista came by later that day and gave her a super cute book titled "Fancy Nancy", a purple feather boa, and a magic wand. So she made a haul!

Can my girl read?!

I seriously doubt it. But today, we were going to the UPS store to deliver a bike thing for Daddy and we walked by the AT&T store. Anna said, "Look Mommy, A-T-T ball!" I was like, "WHAT?!" Did she just read that sign? There's no way. I went through all the possible ways she could have known that without really reading it... and the only way could be that she watches WAY too many commercials.

Unleashing her inner-spaz!

I'm SO bummed I couldn't get a picture of this... but here's the story (and it's probably much funnier if you were there). On Saturday afternoon I went out to get the mail and saw a card clipped onto our mailbox from our neighbors across the street. It was an invitation to a worship service that was going to be held in the front yard of our neighbors'. Interesting I thought since they had just had a kegger the night before at their house. HA! I shouldn't judge. There was also a little note inside the invite that said something like "out of respect for our neighbors...let us know if you have problems with the music." I suppose that meant the volume. So late in the afternoon Anna and I went out to "draw pichures" with sidewalk chalk and to watch the commotion like good neighbors. :) They set up their keyboard synthesizer thing and speakers and practiced their Tejano/English worship songs. When it finally began that night Anna had a BLAST! We just sat on the front porch and listened and danced. She was seriously gettin' down! Several times she was dancing so out of control that she fell over. I tried so hard to get the video camera and get her do it again, but of course the song was over by then and they were doing a slower song. But just picture a toddler doing the Elaine (from Seinfeld) dance. It was awesome. The scary thing was that her dancing is a direct interpretation of the way I dance, which I guess is pretty spastic!

Anna takes over.

This post is a little overdue since these pictures have been sitting in my camera for weeks now. I still thought they were blog-worthy.

Anna must change someone's diaper at least once a day. It may be Baby's diaper, seen above, (who remains almost naked to this day since we can't find her real diaper she came with...and she looks almost anatomically correct. hmm.), it could be Tad's diaper, Puppy is always fair game for a new diaper, and even her hard plastic puppy with the leash may get one once in a while. But her favorite part is putting the "med-cine" on their bottoms. She says "Baby's bottom hurts. I put med-cine." Ya think a kiddo that has this down needs to start potty training? I think so...

Sneezes are good.

I don't have a picture of this since it happened so quickly...and you probably wouldn't have wanted to see it anyway... This morning Anna got on a small sneezing rampage. She sneezed like 5 times saying "bless you" after each as she walked closer to me. On the last sneeze, she blew out this big wad of kleenex that she had apparently jammed up into her nostril. She had been blowing her nose while watching Wonder Pets a few minutes earlier. I had no idea that she had torn off a piece of kleenex and stuck it up there (or at least I think that's when it happened...maybe it had been up there for a while and she was trying to get it out). At least nature finally took care of it. It probably would have just sat up in there and rotted.