Christmas 2010

Gorgeous White Ribbon Christmas 5x7 folded card

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Pictures from Ultrasound

I finally scanned in some pictures of the big ultrasound last week. Sorry that they didn't make it in with the correct post!

Profile with hand

It's definitely a boy!

18 weeks and some AL pictures

I am now 18 weeks so I had to take another belly picture to compare with my first pregnancy. The baby is getting more and more active every day and I've even felt a few kicks from the outside with my hand on my stomach. I know it doesn't look like I've grown much, but I can definitely tell that the uterus is moving up higher. I usually feel the kicks around my belly button or slightly lower, so you can imagine where the baby is by looking at the pictures. I'm still able to comfortably button most of my pants. I've been feeling a lot better with a lot more energy but I'm still 6-7 lbs under my prepregnancy weight. This is even after eating chicken enchiladas, chips, queso, and ice cream for dinner last night! I'm starting to get a little frustrated. At this point with Elise, I was back to +0 after regaining the weight lost in the first trimester. I'm sure that the weight gain is coming soon because I've certainly gotten my appetite back! I even bought 2 half gallons of Blue Bell this week to help :)

Here is the actual belly (and this was right after we ate a huge brunch)...

18 weeks with Elise

On an unrelated note, Mike and I were very excited to go to a Third Day concert last night! They are one of our favorite bands and we've actually gotten to see them live during both times that we have lived in Alabama. They played at a civic center about 15 minutes from our house. Our friends Jen and Norvel came over to eat dinner with us and babysit Elise. They got a little more than they bargained for when she refused to go to bed and kept trying to climb out of her crib (this is VERY unlike her) but they persevered and she eventually went to sleep. We are thankful to have friends in the area and look forward to meeting more people in the future.

Here are a few pictures of our house. Elise is so lucky to have 4 playgrounds and 3 swing sets within sight from our house and when the weather is nice, we love to spend time outside. We live pretty close to the gym on post, so I enjoy running to the gym, doing a few weight machines, and then running back home. I'll post some pictures of the inside in my next post. I've also been meaning to send out an email with our new address, so if you would like to have it and I still haven't done that, feel free to email or text.

Yay for Shutterfly!

I am soooo excited about the 2010 Holiday Card Collection promotion that Shutterfly is offering for bloggers! Go to this page for details and you can get 50 free Christmas cards!

Shutterfly has a great selection of flat and folded Christmas cards and they are printed on great quality cardstock. If I choose a flat card, I would would have a hard time deciding between this classic 5x7 card and this adorable square card. I love the cards that allow you to use multiple pictures. You can even go to the Shutterfly website and play around with your own pictures in your favorite cards before you make your final selection.

The folded cards would also be fun because you could insert a Christmas letter or a personal note to your recipients. My favorite folded card designs are this one and this one.

I'm also in the process of creating the 2011 calendar for our parents and grandparents filled with family pictures from 2010. This is a Christmas tradition that we started last year and a great gift idea! There are so many different options for backgrounds and photo layouts and you can even insert pictures into specific calendar dates. To start creating your calendar, click here!

Thank you, Shutterfly, for making it easy to create Christmas cards and gifts!

It's a...

BOY! We are so excited and can't believe it! Elise has been saying "It's a boy! It's a boy!" all day. I jokingly said "Daddy made a boy!" and (you're never going to believe this) she responded with "Daddy made a football player!" No idea where that thought came from! What a strange connection. We've been watching football a little over Thanksgiving but we certainly haven't talked about having a football player. I'm not sure if Mike and I could produce a football player... maybe a basketball player or golfer though. Ha.

I'm 17 weeks now and I have been feeling pretty good. I started feeling the baby move during our drive to Alabama and now I feel him many times throughout the day, especially when I am sitting or laying down. I’m still able to comfortably button most of my jeans but I do use a rubber band to hold the smaller jeans together at the waist. I’ve been running and lifting weights 3-4 times a week since we’ve moved here and it has felt good to get back in that routine. I'm still down about 7 lbs but the doctor isn't concerned... the baby is growing great and my tummy is certainly getting bigger! I'll take an 18 week picture and post it with my 18 week picture of Elise and we'll see who's bigger. Have a great day!

22 months

This month has been pretty abnormal for Elise, since she spent about half the month with her grandparents before we headed to Alabama (lucky girl!). It took some time for her to recover from all of the spoiling, but we are happy to report that she is back to normal. At the beginning of this month, it took about a week for her sleep schedule to adjust to daylight savings time. On November 15, we closed on our Harker Heights house, and then drove from Austin to Biloxi, Mississippi on the 16^th. Elise did phenomenally well in the car. We brought a variety of snacks and toys and planned a stop about every 2-2.5 hours to eat or play at a park. We also brought a DVD player for the car so that Elise could watch some Sesame Street. Somewhere in Louisiana, she started coughing and her voice became somewhat scratchy. By that night, she was very congested when laying down and had a hard time breathing while we were at the hotel. Add the fact that Boss found it entertaining to bark at his little hotel friends and we had a rough night. The next day, we arrived in Alabama and got settled in our new house. Thankfully, she slept well aside from coughing in her sleep but ate very little for the next several days. I took her to the doctor on the 22^nd and we found out that she had a mild ear infection. One day of antibiotics and a few days to adjust back from being spoiled while she was sick and she is as good as new. She goes to bed around 7­-7:15 and wakes up around 8. She starts her nap around 12:30-12:45 and normally sleeps for 2.5-3 hours. She’s had a great time playing in her new playroom and thinks it is very cool to see helicopters and airplanes all the time. There are FOUR playgrounds and swing sets within 50 yards of our house (including one right outside our back gate). The commissary (grocery store), post office, and neighborhood swimming pool are just a short walk away. This will be a great place to live with small children.

Elise still eats well for her age. Sometimes we have to bribe her with fruit to eat her vegetables, but she doesn’t put up a fuss (and I would give her the fruit anyway, haha).

She is starting to get interested in her lowercase letters. I bought the Leapfrog magnetic fridge set and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it also works with the capital letters that we already have. She pointed out a lowercase “e” on a store sign last week without being prompted, which is the first time she’s done that with a lowercase letter that doesn’t look like the corresponding capital letter.

Her favorite toys are her Duplos and her Green Toys tea set and chef set. I bought her some wooden HABA play food awhile back and she loves to play with it all together. She has actually stopped carrying her purses around with her and doesn’t seem too attached to any one particular thing. She has a set of 12 stacking cups from Discovery Toys and she can now nest them inside each other in the correct order without assistance. She’s so funny to watch when she does it because if she tries to put the wrong cup in, she’ll say “too big!” and then try another one. Our video camera broke a few months ago but we’re going to order another one and we’ll have to get it on video. She gets very proud of herself when she is finished and usually exclaims, “I did it!” She’s also started using one hand to hold something in place while she does something (like zip) with the other hand. She uses he/him correctly to refer to Mike and Boss and uses she/her correctly to refer to me. I will leave you with some funny things that she has said since we moved to Alabama.

(while sitting in the car in traffic)

“I see a cement mixer up there!”

(walking into the playroom the morning after Mike and I organized it with her toys that had been in boxes)

“I have toys to play with!”

(while playing in the playroom)

“I’ll go check on Boss.”

(walks into the living room to find Boss and pets him)

“Good boy, Boss.”

(at night, driving by the airplane display on post)

“There are the airplanes! It’s too dark to see them. They are sleeping right now.”

(driving through Fort Rucker where you alternate being able to see trees and houses)

“I see tall trees! I see houses! Where did they go? There they are!”

(after getting dressed in her red and pink dress… referring to the ladybug bow that she has never worn with this dress)

“Put on this bow. It matches.”

(seeing a book with strawberries on it)

“I like strawberries.”

(putting the small toys back in her learning home)

“Triangle! Pretty sure that goes right here.”

(sticks it in the triangle hole)

Before we got all of our furniture, we often sat in the playroom to eat because the carpet is more comfortable than the tile. One time, Elise kept walking back and forth from my puff-filled hand to her toys. After she had eaten a few puffs, I decided to try them and ate 4 of the remaining 8. When she came back to get more, she stared at my hand for a few seconds, gave me a funny look and said “Mama ate my puffs!”

I'll get some pictures up soon!

15 weeks and Elise update

I can't believe that I'm already 15 weeks! Time has passed so quickly over the last month and we are really looking forward to getting settled in Alabama. We close on our house on Monday and then start driving on Tuesday. Please pray that Elise is a good car traveler! We bought a car case for our portable DVD player and I ordered several Sesame Street/Elmo DVDs to take along for the ride. We've stocked up on raisins, squeezy packs, yogurt bites, and crackers. The next time I post will be from our new house!

I've still been feeling queasy in the evenings but I've gained a few pounds back over the last 3 weeks. I'm about 6 pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight, but the belly is definitely getting bigger. The queasiness lasted until about 16 weeks with Elise, so I am hoping that I'll be feeling good all (or at least most) of the time pretty soon. I still get tired, but I can make it through the day without needing or wanting a nap (most of the time, anyway). I do like to go to sleep by 9 :) I've been running 2-3 miles a few times a week and I hope to continue that for a few more months.

My next appointment is on Monday at Fort Hood and then I'll only have 2 weeks until the big ultrasound appointment on November 29 in Alabama. I'm expecting to feel the baby move pretty soon because I started feeling Elise around 15.5 weeks.

Elise has been saying some really funny things in the last few months. We forgot to mention in the 21 month post that she uses "I" and "my" very well in sentences. She also uses present and past tense pretty well, especially if the two sentences are back to back (like "Mama go get ___" and then followed by "Mama got ____!". She also says "Elise" much more clearly than she has ever said it before (she used to refer to herself as "Eeese"). She basically narrates her day in sentences. Here are some things that I've written down over the last month or so.


If we ask her "What are you going to be?", she will respond with "Big sister!" unless she feels like she is being forced to perform. I was especially impressed with her response to the following question because it had never been asked in this form...
Me: (putting on her big sis shirt) "Who is going to be a big sis?"
Elise: "I be big sis!"
Me: (a few minutes later) "Who is going to be a big sis?"
Elise: "Elise!"


The other day, Mike and I were sitting on the couch with her and she wanted to press the buttons on the computer while we were trying to look something up.
Me to Mike: "Maybe we should get her a computer sometime soon."
Elise: "Buy Elise computer!"


A month or so ago, she was sitting in her car seat and holding her purses with her right hand. Her music (the Baby Einstein Takealong Tunes) was stuck between her right leg and the side of the car seat (under the purses). She was getting very upset and asking for help because "music stuck!" Her left arm couldn't reach all the way across the car seat and get a good grip on it. We couldn't help but laugh at her predicament.
Elise: "Music stuck!"
Mike: "Put your purses in your left hand so that you can reach the music with your right hand."
Elise: (does what daddy suggested) "Elise did it!" (big smile and holds the music up) "I got it!"


Earlier this week, Elise spent the night with my parents. She woke up and talked happily for 20-30 minutes and then my mom decided to go get her up. As she got to Elise's door, she heard a little voice singing "Row row row your boat, gently down the stream....". The funny thing is that no one I've talked to regularly sings this song with her. I don't think I have ever sung it to her. I think she might have learned it at church (along with Ring Around the Rosy).

She loves to point out airplanes, helicopters, etc. When she sees one of these things, the conversation goes like this...
Elise: "I see airplane!"
Me: "Where is it?"
Elise: (pointing) "Over there!"
Me: "Where is it going?"
Elise: "Airport!" "Bye bye, airplane!"
If the conversation is about a helicopter, she usually throws in something like "Daddy flies helicopters!" The girl is going to LOVE living at Fort Rucker because she'll see helicopters all the time because of all the flight school students.


She loves to go to HEB. If we are out of a common food item at home and she wants some, I'll tell her that we will get it next time we go to HEB. Well, she doesn't let me forget, even if it has been a few days. When I am making my list, I'll ask her what we need to get at HEB and she will rattle off the specific things that we've mentioned that we need to buy.


That's all I can remember for right now. Have a good weekend!