Babies and Bellies!

First of all, Daniel is definitely gearing up to be a big brother. For one, he tries to "feed the baby" now by jamming his favorite goldfish graham crackers in my belly button. The best part is that he then makes a "nom nom nom" sound of the baby eating and enjoying it. He keeps telling me the baby is "sad" (which worries me, maybe his intuition is telling him something I don't know?) and giving the baby hugs and kisses. Unfortunately, he loves to pull up my shirt in public and "show the baby off".
A friend let me watch her 6 month old son last week, so we got to see how Daniel handled a real live baby. Predictably, he screamed at first because mommy was paying such close attention to something other than him, but he quickly changed his mind and decided that mommy was old news and just wanted to be with that baby (who, by the way, is super mellow and smiley and agreeable):


I think he'll be a great big brother!

You know how they say you're more likely to show a pregnant belly sooner with a second pregnancy? Yeah, they're right! Check this out:

That's from today- I'm ten weeks along today! One quarter of the way done!
For comparison, here I am at 4 weeks along:

And here I am from last pregnancy, EIGHT weeks further long (18) :


I'm excited to be showing so soon though, makes the whole thing feel more real! I'm down about 7 pounds from where I started and just beginning to get my appetite back.

Patches (our new dog)

So, we have our new dog! A family in the ward was moving nearby and couldn't have a big dog at their new place, so we thought we would expand our little family. Lucy has gotten fat and spends way too much time on her couch, so we think a friend will do her some good.

Patches, a one-year-old lab mix joined our family officially the other day. Lucy immediately became submissive and is definitely NOT an alpha-type dog, but they've became fast friends, romping and wrestling in the back yard.


She's been very patient and gentle towards Daniel (pictured here giving her a hug):

We need to work on some manners (barking, sitting, staying) but all in all she's a great dog. She already won't leave Kenny's side, she just loves company.
We realize this officially makes us "dog people", and we're ok with that. Lucy has been such a blessing to our family and we think Patches will too. Now we just need to see if she'll catch a frisbee (our biggest disappointment in Lucy was her lack of frisbee-catching skills).

Silly Boy, so much fun (pic heavy)

Daniel has been so much fun lately!
First, the talking thing is coming along wonderfully. He now has 12 signs and about 20 words- including a few polysyllabic ones that I love- "uh-oh" and "bubbles" ("bub-bow").

He still loves to help clean up, sweep, vacuum... he even brought me the dirty dishes from the table last night (sadly, he dropped one and broke one of my favorite blue plates:(). He's sleeping really well on his big boy twin bed and most mornings we just sit on his bed and look out the window and point out animals on his bedspread for 15 minutes. He LOVES reading and will force me to reread the same book 3 or 4 times then go grab another. Did you know that Green Eggs and Ham has over 50 pages?!?

He likes to do goofy things like wear his shorts on his head:

Climb into the bathtub fully clothed and turn on the cold water:

Play with dirt (often dumping it in his hair):

Walk the dog while Daddy walks him:

Be afraid of ducklings:

(which, by the way, I am completely in love with:)


And have Epic Sword Battles with daddy at the Frisbee Golf Course:





By the way, I know us washingtonians like to brag about the beauty and greenness of our state, but this time of year I think Houston could give the NW a run for its money:

Of course, I'd still choose Washington any day. I'm a bit homesick.

Lastly, Daniel got a haircut yesterday. Here he is before the cut- I had a woman compliment how beautiful my "little girl" was the other day. He was wearing a dark blue shirt and overalls.

(PS isn't his new "pose for the camera" smile LOVELY?)


4 hours of haircutting and wiggling later (he's pushing the garbage can, helping us clean up):


K, so I'm not great at cutting wiggly little boy's hair. It's not awful, but... definitely room for improvement.

And lastly, and completely unrelated- check out the mushrooms we found growing on an old bag of mulch in our garage!

If you didn't catch that...

I'm pregnant!
take a look again:

Sorry the text on the video was hard to read- it says "I'm going to be a big brother sometime next december!!!" I had a real hard time not micromanaging Daniel and actually letting him decorate the poster himself, but you can see in the end he made it look just lovely;)
I had grand ambitions of a much cuter video but Daniel wouldn't cooperate on camera, and I was sick of waiting for the perfect video announcement:). If I ask him to point to the baby in my tummy, he usually points to my belly, though sometimes he'll point to his own instead. It's pretty cute.
I'm 4 weeks, 4 days along, due December 16th. We only found out last Tuesday. We were so sad last year when we thought we couldn't afford another baby for a long while, then we were blessed with these consulting jobs that make it possible. I felt very storngly last september that God wanted us to try for a baby in February, but... finances got worse and worse. It wasn't until the end of January that everything fell into place financially and I saw that God had it all planned out all along:) We're extremely happy and excited.
So... I suck at keeping secrets. Especially one I'm so happy, I want to shout it from rooftops. I know it's early for this to be public news, but, I want to share my happiness. If, heaven forbid, we lose the baby early on, I'll probably want public support then too.
Daniel is going to be 2 in a couple weeks, so he'll be nearly three years old when this baby comes along. We think he'll be a great big brother once he gets past his mommy's-lap territorial issues.:)

Daniel's Artwork

I've loved all the artwork Daniel has brought home from school. In fact, it has inspired to get more craftsy with him. We've been working with finger paints and crayons and stickers lately. In fact, he made this poster he was very eager to show off (if you watch one video post of mine this year, this should be it):

It's not the prettiest drawing, but I think the kid shows a lot of promise;)
(sorry if the text is hard to read)

A Boy and His Dog

For those who enjoyed this:

And this:


We have a new series:

Daniel putting his favorite necklace on Lucy. (yes, my son likes necklaces. I'm over it)


Our new favorite activity is playing in the backyard. The first thing Daniel does when we come downstairs is start saying "sit sit sit sit" (a rather dangerous thing to say with a lisp), goes to the backdoor, goes on the back "porch" (well, small slab of cement), plops down, and then orders me to sit next to him. Then he plays with Lucy:




Which then moves on to hugging. Daniel will hug any dog he meets. At the park, he will run to a dog the second he sees it and hug it. Fortunately they've all been tolerant so far. Lucy has definitely gotten used to it:



Finally Lucy loses Daniel's attention to anything resembling a flower, which Daniel MUST smell.


(Note that our grass is indeed in the process of looking alive again. Enough so that it needs to be mowed.)

Meanwhile mommy tries desperately to not think too much about the creepy buzzard hanging out near our yard:

I HATE buzzards!

A little bit of catch up

First, two new web albums- one from New Orleans (k, this one isn't THAT new, I just haven't blogged in a while), and one from this month (I didn't take as many pics in San Antonio, sorry... I will have to steal some from my mom). My favorite from the whole bunch is probably this one:

Man, does that make me laugh. The man had just said not to squeeze the gator and here Daniel grabbed it with everything he had.

Daniel's speech is coming along nicely. I don't know if it's the age he is at, or the speech therapist folks (who, while I like them and their visits, don't do much other than tell me I'm already doing things right), or school, but he finally has the following words:

• momma
• dadda
• sock
• shoe
• stuck
• rock
• stick
• hot
• no (it's actually a very cute "no"- sounds like a cat meowing)
• down

He also signs milk, baby, please, thank you, sorry, help, water, eat/food, bird/fly, and down. He's tried Banana a few times, too:). He sings along with me sometimes and understands so much these days.

And check out these curls!