Great Giveaway

I LOVE this idea. My sister, Amy, suggests on her blog that this would be a great necessity for transitioning Hannah to her big girl room in preparation for her baby brother. I completely agree. Go to Adam and Andrew's blog to learn more.

It's a...

This sweet big sister......found out yesterday that she's going to have a little BROTHER!We had a bouquet of blue balloons and pink balloons awaiting the verdict to share with the big sister-to-be.She was less-than-thrilled with the to-do when Mama and Daddy arrived to pick her up, but she warmed up to the whole thing once things settled down a bit and she was in Mama's arms (reassured that she, in fact, was still our baby).And when given a chance to hold a bouquet of "boons" for the first time in her life, she was thrilled.

(Side note: Our sweet baby boy looks just perfect. He's growing normally and developing perfectly. And the time spent watching our precious boy while the sonographer measured and marked away was a gift. He is totally chill - something I never experienced with Hannah. The tech actually had to poke and prod and get rough to wake him up enough to get the angles she needed to get. It was uncharted territory for this mama of a busybody little girl. I had two concerns - weight gain (since I'm still dealing with morning sickness) and lack of movement. Both were just fine. In fact, they discovered I have anterior placenta which is muffling his movement. So he's moving just fine, I just can't feel it very much (although as I type, he's kicking like crazy - yea!). As far as the weight, I'm fine. I started out heavier than I was pre-pregnancy with Hannah, so I had a bit of a cushion there. And I have hit my pre-pregancy weight again finally after my initial loss. In fact, I was told to indulge next week at the Thanksgiving table to put on a few pounds before Christmas. Nice! Hopefully my appetite will be big by then.
As for having a boy, I am shocked! For the days prior to the sonogram, I was pretty certain it was a girl. I am elated to have the chance to experience both a boy and a girl, and we already love this little one more than words can describe. Chris is absolutely on cloud 9. His feet haven't yet hit the ground again since our finding out yesterday. The sonographer put the wand to my belly, and it was immediately a between-the-legs shot. We both clearly saw something we haven't seen before. =) She asked if we wanted to find out the gender, and we said that it was very clear and that we already knew. It truly was so much fun.
So we're setting our eyes on all things blue and are falling in love with the idea of raising a little boy. What an adventure, and we can't wait!!)

It's about that time

We go in on Monday for our midway sonogram where we get to (hopefully!) find out whether this baby is a sister or a brother for Hannah. My mind changes daily, but Chris is set. I'd love to hear your guesses in the comments.

Here are some things to help you decide. Feel free to ask away if you have any specific determining questions.

I'm carrying a little higher than I did with Hannah.
I had bad heartburn the entire first trimester.
I'm still dealing with morning sickness. (With Hannah it was gone around 15 weeks.)
I'm not having any cravings (probably because I'm still sick), but I do tend toward fresh fruits and veggies and fruit juices.
I'm freezing cold most of the time.
I have the acne of a 13-year-old.

Alrighty, what do YOU think?

A Little Privacy

Chris and I have decided to make this blog private in the near future. I find myself often tweaking stories and nixing drafts because I don't feel like it's fair to Hannah to share personal things online for anyone and everyone to read. I would like to be more open, but I feel I need to do that in a more private forum out of respect for her privacy. I know there are a lot of readers who I do not know personally, and I am absolutely fine including you on the invitation list. I just don't want our blog to appear in Google searches anymore. We have a ton of hits daily from Google searches - people from all over the world. It sometimes feels a little daunting that anyone and everyone is just a search engine click away.

In order to get an invite, please e-mail me at lifeandtimesofaliciaandchris(at)yahoo(dot)com. If you don't know me, just let me know how you found our blog. I read a ton of blogs regularly of people I don't know, and I would hate to miss out on those, so I completely understand. I will absolutely include you, and I hope you don't feel embarrassed to ask! I will let you know ahead of time when the blog will go private (probably before Christmas), so you have plenty of time.

Thanks, and I hope to maybe get to know our blog readers a little better because of this!

Finally!

There are many subtle ways this second pregnancy is different. One of them has been movement. Hannah was very active in utero. I started feeling very clear flutters around 12 or 13 weeks, and by 16 weeks Chris could feel the kicks too. I remember going to my 16 week appointment. The doctor mentioned that I would be able to feel movement probably before the next time he saw me. I told him that I already was feeling movement and that even Chris could feel it from the outside already. He gave me that smile that said, "That's so cute that you think you're feeling movement so strong already." Well, he tried to place the doppler on my belly to find the heartbeat, and Hannah kicked so strongly that it knocked the doppler off my belly. My doctor was really surprised and had to laugh at our little soccer player.
This time I was only feeling teeny tiny flutters rarely. I'll be 18 weeks tomorrow, and just this weekend I've started to feel more movement - not just flutters. Finally! I guess it's because that's what you remember from your first pregnancy - actually feeling the life inside of you. So it seems like I've waited forever for this, and it is precious.

Take me out to the ballgame

We finally made it to our nephew's baseball game last weekend - the last one of the season. Hannah had an absolute blast cheering him on with G, her three-year-old companion. They were so cute.

Pictoral Updates

Here's Baby #2's first belly shot. Do you see Hannah's little head in the top picture? Here's why she was so still and quiet.
A late find in the garden as we were cleaning up - a softball-sized watermelon. We promptly ate it, and it was delicious!
Hannah's retro kitchen is teaching her the joys of the cordless phone. She gets so frustrated because she can't just put the phone down in the middle of an important call to go answer her ringing cell!
Reading books with Dada. Hannah spent all of Tuesday sniffling and sneezing with these horribly puffy red eyes (kinda hard to see in this picture). Chris and I got it shortly afterwards. I thought it was allergies, but pollen.com and our local news' website say we haven't had any high allergens lately. Hmm...Clearly we need to move her little chair into the family room so she doesn't have to sit on her shape sorter to read. =)Love these monkey pj's from Aunt Amy. I had to snap a picture as I was putting her to bed in them. She's blowing me kisses as if to tell me to leave already so she can go to sleep.Hannah has to have some form of "shoes" on her feet at all times. She used these empty tissue boxes as shoes one day shortly before the Office wedding episode. We had to laugh out loud when we saw Kevin stealing her idea.

Happy Lalapuss (spoken with a lisp)

When a word is too long or tough for Hannah to say, she'll repeat the first syllable or two, then add a "puss" on the end (more like pooth for Hannah). For example, my mom and dad's dog, Sophie, is "Sopuss" in Hannah's language. Yesterday wasn't Halloween, it was "Lalapuss." And it was a good one. Here are a ton of pictures of our busy, busy day. We started with a morning playing outside because the weather here was amazing! Hannah posed for some pictures with her pumpkin, collected leaves and sticks (our daily activity), and waved to neighbors and cars. When Chris got home, we set out to deliver some goodies to the neighbors since we trick-or-treat with family in another neighborhood. Obviously Hannah enjoyed herself.

After lunch we carved her pumpkin. Hannah, a lover of life, was tickled with every step of that process. She loved touching the "guts" and watching the face appear as we carved.And she even paused for a Mama kiss. Love her.
Here she shows off one of the eyes she helped remove.
Admiring her finished product (which she promptly kissed in true Hannah fashion).We got cleaned up and headed to my sister-in-law's for dinner and trick-or-treating. Hannah loves spending time with her four boy cousins. We ate dinner, monkeyed around wrestling and such, then got dressed up for the evening. Hannah went as a pumpkin princess. It was a mix between a pregnant, sick mama who didn't feel good enough to go all out and an 18-month-old who doesn't fancy costumes or anything in her hair or on her head. I can't believe she kept her pigtails in all day. I had to include this picture of Hannah getting caught in their candy bowl before we left. It has "Who, me?!" written all over it. =)Hannah loved trick-or-treating. She is a true socialite and appreciates any opportunity to wave, smile, and bat her baby blue eyes. We had to laugh, though. We had spent the afternoon delivering treats to neighbors, and that stuck with her. She walked up to every house, reached into her candy bucket, and gave them a piece of her candy. Cutie. Here's the crew all ready to go. Can you believe we got 4 out of 5 looking at the camera smiling? And the poor little frog has a good excuse - he's getting his second front tooth.

Needless to say, we appreciated the extra hour last night, and Hannah slept like a log. What a fun, fun day. I hope you and yours enjoyed as many smiles, giggles, and sugary kisses as we did.