Big Brother!

That's right, I'M PREGNANT! I've wanted to tell you all for so long! August 13 to be exact, 2 and a half weeks after Caiden's 2nd birthday. We had the first ultrasound on January 7 when I was 8 weeks, 6 days and everything looked great and on track with a strong heartbeat at 179 bpm.

We had the second ultrasound today, I'm 11 weeks, 6 days! Pretty much made it through the first trimester! The heartbeat was at 163 bpm and I'm tracking a couple days ahead of my due date. The baby was super active and bouncing all over the place (must have been that coffee this morning ;) This ultrasound was the nuchal transluency test to measure the clear space behind the babies neck. The ultrasound tech said anything under a 3 is normal and this measurement came in at 1.16. Perfect! He said everything else looked great and he'll see us again in 8 weeks for the big ultrasound where he can see the gender -Baby wasn't cooperating this time with positioning so we told him we'll just wait until 20 weeks, no guessing.

The first trimester has not been enjoyable. Not only could I not partake in Holiday libations but I had ALL day nausea weeks 6, 7 and 8 and I also got the flu during week 8. The worst flu I've ever had. Sore throat, chills, headache, body ache, vomiting, stuffy nose...all of them. It sucked so bad. That happened over New Years, needless to say we did nothing and I could barely stay awake to celebrate the east coast new years. By week 9 the nausea was getting better but still came and went throughout the day. I'm still pretty exhausted all day long and I have to admit, while Caiden naps I usually nap, too. And by 8:45pm I'm looking at the clock convinced it's later and so ready to go to bed.

To backtrack a bit, here's how we found out. The day we left Virginia (when we were back for Thanksgiving) to come back to San Diego I was late. I decided to give it another day just in case as it was our first month trying so I didn't think it would "work". Marc wasn't convinced it could happen so soon so I decided to take the test on Tuesday, Dec. 3, while he was at work. I took it around 10am while Caiden was napping and when I saw the word "Pregnant" pop up I was stunned. Another one of those jaw dropping moments. It was so hard not to call Marc that day and tell him but I wanted it to be in person so when he got home I gave Caiden the pregnancy test and had him hand it to him. Marc was confused and didn't know what it was at first and I was just staring at him smiling and he didn't really look at the stick, he thought it was just one of Caiden's toys. I don't remember exactly but I said something like, "Do you see it?" And he looked closer and just had a look of disbelief on his face.

We told my parents when we were back at Christmas. My Dad picked us up from the airport and we put Caiden in a shirt that said, "Big Brother" before we got off the plane. Of course he didn't notice but I figured when we got home my Mom would notice right away....NOPE. Literally no one said anything. So we had to say, "HELLO, do you see his shirt?!?!" When my sister got home a few days later we had him in the shirt again...and again, nothing.

Some of the responses we received:
"Well, I thought it was just a hand-me-down"
"I mean, I knew he'd be a big brother eventually I just thought he was wearing the shirt because..."
"I noticed, I just didn't want to be nosy"

The upside of getting pregnant before the holidays was that my morning sickness was the worse weeks 6 and 7 and that is when we were in Nebraska. Having all the help with Caiden was blissful. The only place I really felt comfortable was curled up in a ball in bed. It's true how you forget the "bad" parts of previous pregnancies -I mean, you don't completely forget, you just choose not to remember them I think. But people keep asking if my symptoms are the same as with Caiden, and from what I remember they pretty much are. That's when everyone says, "Oh, then you're totally having another boy." I kind of have a hunch that I am, but who really knows...we'll find out soon enough! In the meantime I'm just feeling very lucky that we have another one on the way and trying to "prep" Caiden for being a big brother. He's not very patient sometimes (like in the morning when he wants cereal and he cries and says, "cheerios" over and over until it's literally in his mouth) and that kind of scares me when I think about what's going to happen when there's a newborn in the mix.

No belly photos yet...there's probably a little something there but I'm pretty sure it's just because I haven't done any good workouts in months.

Caiden: 18 months

A YEAR AND A HALF????  Seriously we have a year and a half year old. Crazy to believe. He gets more and more fun every day. I remember a conversation with a doctor we had at his 9 month appointment or so. He had a 2 year old and said, "just wait, it gets even better". We weren't sure what he meant and thought for sure he was at his cutest then, but he was right.

His hair grows like a weed and we have to cut it every few weeks otherwise it would be in his eyes and down his back. He's not a huge fan of it and we usually do it in the bath when he's all done. The first few times when he saw the hair fall on to his arm he started crying so hard. Not sure what he thought was going on but he's getting a tiny bit better...now he just gets irritated when we do it but doesn't cry.

He is a human sponge and talks all the time. There are moments he will repeat ANYTHING I say. I will rattle off word after word after word and he will repeat them. Anything from colors to difficult words like "refrigerator" and "octopus". I'm pretty sure he knows a word for every letter in the alphabet as well. We have these books called Alphabooks by Baby Einestein...he loves them. He will entertain himself with them all the time and he knows almost every object that is in them. I highly recommend these. He also loves to tell me what he wants, "orange", "milk", "cheerios", "moon", "stars", "balloon", "airplane", "touch" (as in the moon or the airplanes). His vocabulary is extensive and I can't believe how fast his little brain is picking things up. On another note, he's also starting to sing. He LOVES "Baa, baa black sheep" and will sing, wag his finger and shake his head. It sounds like, "Baa, baa datt. Ysshure, ysshure, one, one, one."

He's still going down between 7-8pm but he's waking up between 6-7am. His nap is anywhere from 1.5 hours to 3 hours and there is no rhyme or reason why one day it's 1 and the other day it's 3 hours. If he takes a three hour nap, I'll do the exact same thing the next day and it's only an hour. Beats me?!?!

He's still fitting in to a lot of his 12-18 month clothes, but wearing a couple things from the 24M/ 2T stuff. He's a shorty so far but has got a Buddha belly on him so some of this pants are getting really tight around the waist but the 24M pants are way too long.

He's really in to a couple of books right now. Brown Bear, Brown Bear and Big Red Barn. I'm probably reading each of these two or three times a day. He loves to bring it to you and then turn around and scootch his little booty right on to your lap. Cutest. Thing. Ever!

Shortly after his 15 month post he started getting three of his first year molars. Then about 3 weeks ago the fourth one came through. They have NOT been fun. He wakes up around 3am sometimes just crying with fingers in his mouth and it's painful all around. So right now he's got 12 teeth total...only 8 more, ha!

He is still really cuddly with me. He gives me kisses and hugs all the time. Doesn't matter what we're doing or where we are...if I ask...he gives. He's pretty much the sweetest boy I've met. He even says, "I love you". Pretty sure he's a big momma's boy right now...but I don't care ;)


He did not want to sit on the couch next to the ipod to let us take pictures. We managed to give him a book and he was reading to himself for a minute or so but after that no bueno.

Really...that face? It will get me every time.

And we've let him feed himself. Sometimes it takes forever and I just want to shove it in for him. But I know the more he does it the better he'll get.

Eating beets from my parents garden

Here are just some photos taken from my phone over the past few weeks. 

Wearing his blankie as a cape. Ha

He's been on a kick of drinking his milk out of this toy cookie jar. One day I just randomly put it in there when I was giving it to him and he insisted on drinking out of it for weeks. 

He's still obsessed with flowers. Always stopping to smell them. 

Hope he's coming up with something good!

Mornings

The past few weeks Caiden's one nap has been pushing from 10/10:30 to 11:30/12 so we've got a lot of hours to kill in the morning. I've never been a big morning person so I've always been content with staying in the house and playing with him until his nap. Well now after a few hours of that we're both bored so we've been doing play dates in the morning, going to the park and other "activities"...like this.

Rara no more...it's Sara now!

Get ready to smile your way through this entire video. Ever since Caiden started calling Sara by her name it's been "Rara". Well last night he finally started getting his "S's" down and he was so proud of himself. Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4he7PWroig

Christmas card photo shoot

I've been meaning to post these for awhile but keep forgetting. Here are some of the photos from when we did our photo shoot at the end of September for our Holiday card. I was really nervous with how the whole thing was going to go but Caiden and Marc ;) did surprisingly well. I thought for sure we'd get a lot of good photos out of it. Unfortunately I wasn't really satisfied with what we received. We were sent 15 photos and in not one of the photos were all three of us looking at the camera with a normal look or smile on our face or even our three faces just completely showing...and I was too much of a chicken to go back to the photographer and ask for more.