Big girl getting bigger

Audrey has been growing and changing so much in the past few months. For one, she's definitely become a toddler, complete with meltdowns and tantrums and a mind of her own. So far we've never had a tantrum or meltdown out in public, but they happen at home every now and then. Most often it is because she isn't getting something she wants - like YouTube videos of Baby Einstein. I'll put them on the computer or tablet for her sometimes when dinner is taking up my attention or when I need to get some work done and respond to emails. I'd like to say that during these times, she is happy to play quietly in her room alone, but it seems that she can sense when I am busy and it is at that moment that she wants me to pick her up or play with her the most. So anyways, the videos. she loves them, but I will only let her have but so much screen time a day (about a half hour) so when I've decided its enough, she usually loses her cool. She doesn't get angry, she just gets sad and starts crying, which makes me sad...but I just explain to her that video time is over and we can watch more tomorrow.

She's talking a lot more. Both in terms of babbling, which she's always done, but also she is picking up more words all the time. My favorite words that she says right now are yellow - "Lellow-ow" and Zero, which she does actually say correctly. For some reason, she always says these two words very enthusiastically, practically yelling them. We'll be in the car sometimes and she'll start in with the "ZEROooo! Zeroooo!" and sure enough, they'll be a truck with a phone number or address containing the number zero. She picked that word up from her "number train" video on youtube. Its all good because she's learning her numbers, but now when I count and start from one instead of zero, she insists that I start over and begin with zero.

She's also very good now and identifying her letters. She can identify almost the whole alphabet if I ask her to point to them, but she can only actually say about half of them. I was shocked at how fast she picked them up. Her grandma bought her a magnadoodle to write on, and one day I just wrote her name and told her the letters. Then suddenly she was all "A!!" "EEeee" etc. The funniest one is U...because she calls it "Audrey". She'll say A,E,I,O, Audrey. Hahah! I love it. She has a hard time with some letters because they look alike - W/M, V/A (she turns the M and the V upside down and calls them W and A), E/F, T/I, N/Z, but overall I'm just impressed with the fact that she knows them. She tries to sing her ABCs sometimes and it goes like this: "A,B,D...." and that's it. :)

Riding the Train for the first time

She is also picking up her shapes and colors really fast, too. She knows oval, circle, square, and triangle (although when she says them, oval is the only one anyone can understand besides me). And for colors, she can find them if I ask her to, but the only one she actually says is YELLOW.

Josh picked up this awesome swing set from one of his customers at work...for free! We only had to pay to rent a truck to haul it over to our house, and Josh and dad got that done in a day. It is old and some of the wood is chipped (splinter waiting to happen) but so far it has been so great. Audrey loves the slide and we love being able to sit outside without chasing her all over the yard. This keeps her busy for a while usually and tires her out.

Obviously I've failed to update this entire summer and I have sooo many more pictures to share, so bare with me - I might just do a photo dump on here and leave it at that! More to come later. :)

25 Weeks!

Here's a belly shot from yesterday - at 25 weeks pregnant (about 6 months) and a belly shot when I was 25 weeks pregnant with Audrey.

Do you notice the BIG difference? For one, I'm much bigger this time around (which is surprising, considering I've gained less weight so far). Blame it on a pre-used uterus I guess. The second thing is how much lower I'm carrying. I feel like this picture is kind of deceptive too. When I look in the mirror what I see is much bigger...and lower. According to the old wives' tales, this means I am having a boy. So as of like two days ago I'm sure its a boy. Ask me again next week and it will probably be a girl. I go back and forth daily. Josh thinks it is a girl. One of us is right.

Other than how I'm carrying, there are a few more differences in this pregnancy at this point. I'm more tired than I was last time. Although actually, I went back and read my baby book and at this same point in the pregnancy I said I was "exhausted" so maybe the truth is that I'm always just tired and really want a nap. Yeah, that sounds about right! However, compared to the earlier part of my pregnancy my energy is way up! I'm actually being productive during Audrey's nap time instead of taking a nap myself (though I do nap some days).

22 Weeks

We had our 20 week ultrasound a few weeks ago that looked at the baby's anatomy and made sure it all was in the right place and measuring right on track. Surprise, we didn't find out the sex. :) It was nice seeing the little baby bird in there and seeing him move around. At one point he was sucking his thumb and it popped out of his mouth and we got to see him scramble around to find his thumb again. It was adorable and made us all laugh. Other than that, he was pretty calm and didn't move around too much. But that was five weeks ago....now he is all over the place! Moving and kicking and jumping and apparently trying to climb straight out of my vagina already, or at least it feels that way because he's so low. I do not recall Audrey being this active this early in the pregnancy, either, but I'd have to go back and re-read. **Ok, I have a horrible memory. I just went back and read my blog from when I was 27 weeks and yes, apparently she was equally active and also was trying to claw her way out of my uterus.**

The baby feels much heavier than I remember Audrey feeling, too (but as we just discovered, I have a bad memory and nothing I "remember" should be taken as truth). Maybe part of the heaviness is that I'm carrying lower, so it feels more out front. Sometimes I feel like I need to sit down just after being outside with Audrey for a few minutes because it feels like my back is overcompensating for what's out front. Seeing as I still have 15 weeks left, this 'heaviness' scares me for what lies ahead. I picture myself at 35 weeks pregnant and unable to stand up. Maybe I should look into one of those belly bands that supposedly supports the belly.

There you have a thorough update as to how the pregnancy is going and how I'm feeling these days. I'll leave you with another picture of the little bird. Its a bad picture to begin with, plus its a picture of a picture because they didn't give me the photos on a disk. Sorry about that. Does this look like a boy? Or a girl?