Some maternity pictures

The other day I decided to take the family out and document the belly. I set the camera up for Jeff and told him exactly what to do. I've very happy with the results :)

Zoey is getting big

I'm not nearly as diligent as I should about taking belly shots and in fact these are all I have of the entire pregnancy so far but hey, something is better then nothing right? I'll make it up to her by rocking her newborn photos :)

14 weeks... not a whole lot there. It looks more like I just had a big dinner :)

18.5 and 25.5 weeks. Kinda neat to see given I was wearing the same shirt and took them in the same spot

and the most recent one at 27.5 weeks

Finally a summer with no humidity or mosquitos!

After spending the last 5 years in Georgia and Wisconsin I started dreading summer. It was just impossible to go enjoy your evening without having to take a bath in stinky bug spray ahead of time and the humidity... oh boy! it sucked, especially when pregnant!

So I had been looking forward to our first "real" summer in a long time (even longer then the 5 years given that neither Portland or Seattle are particularly "summery" places)

I think the girls enjoyed it as well. The one thing I'm bummed about is not having taken them to the pool much. Turns out they love water!! I took them once and to my surprise they were very into it... even jumping all by themselves from the edge and I didn't even have to catch them... they'd go under water and back up all on their own :).

We did hit the sprayground several times though

But mostly we just spent a lot of time in our backyard and just had friends over :)

and almost 4 months later

A lot has happened in the last few months so I'll slowly catch up but I'll start with the most important thing...

Zoey Evangeline <3

We didn't plan on finding out. But we decided to have the gender written on a card like we did with Isla. We never opened it with her :).
When we got to the ultrasound place, the tech refused to write it down. She said she could tell us what the baby was, print us a picture but she couldn't write it and seal the envelope. Stupid, right? so we told her to just start the ultrasound and get her measurements and we could decide later.
At some point she left the room for about 5 mins and during that time Jeff and I decided to just go ahead and find out and thank goodness we did because when the tech came back, she didn't say a word and just continued the scan. All of the sudden she zooms in on an area, freezes the screen and asks "so, did you decide if you want to know the gender?". Stupid again!! I looked at Jeff before she even finished the sentence and he just yelled out "it's a girl!!"
Come on lady! we have girls, we know what they look like on an ultrasound! why in the world would she pull up the "money shot" BEFORE making sure we wanted to see it. It didn't matter at that point. Even if we had decided to not find out we would have anyway :(

Oh well, 3 girls it is for us :)

Happy 3rd birthday to Maja!!!

Time sure does fly. She is such a big girl now

Family vacation

We love road trips around here so when Daddy's fishing trip came up, the girls and I decided to meet him out by the coast and spend a few days there. This was the first time the girls were at the beach and they had a blast.

We started out with a pit stop at the Seattle Zoo and continued over to Ocean Shores to meet Daddy and spend the night. It was all very last minute as it was decided just the night before when Jeff left so while he was fishing the next days after we arrived from Seattle, we found a hotel and decided to check out the beach. After a brief hiccup (Mommy got the car stuck in the sand) the girls had their first taste of the ocean:

The next day we decided to move to Seaside in Oregon. They loved building sandcastles but the weather was definitely more windy:

Then we remembered Grandma and Grandma were spending the weekend in Bend, OR and since we hadn't seen our friends Chris and Sara who live there in a long time, we decided to spend another night there on our way back home.

4 days, 2 States. 4 towns and 1025 miles on a whim.. fun times! We have to do it again next year although this time around Daddy will NOT be on his motorcycle alongside us but in the car with us :)

Baby in the belly

Today we were sitting together on the couch and I told the girls that there is a baby in my belly. They both proceeded to lift my shirt up and tried looking into my belly button to see if they could see the baby. It was so adorable. Maja looked especially intrigued by it and couldn't quite get why she couldn't see a baby... "I don't see it Mommy"

Then I asked if it's a boy or a girl and she said "Hmm... let me think... I think it's a girl"

My twirly girl

This is all she wants to do now... put on pretty dresses and dance around. She even has her ballerina moves down putting her hands up. She is turning into such a girly girl

Getting closer

to getting Maja feeling better.

She has been having some health issues for a while and we finally got an appointment with a specialist at the Children's Hospital in Spokane. We don't have any final answers yet but things are looking better. She will have to stay on a mostly dairy free diet but at least it's ok for her to have some of it occasionally. Jeff is pretty happy we can have pizza again and both her and Isla love the rice milk and soy cheese :)

She loved her pretty "dress" and was pretty excited after they took her picture AKA X-rays. I couldn't go in with her for that part because I'm pregnant but Babcia said she did really good

and then we went shopping... I couldn't resist these shoes :)

Isla is a whole different story

Maja loves putting on dresses... Isla figured out how to get naked... I'm not impressed either

"I'm a princess"

this is how Maja came out of her room... she found a dress and was convinced she was a princess. Who told her about princesses is beyond me :). Then she danced around the living room

Baby Matteo

Baby flutters are the best... it's super early (about 13 wks) but I can already feel them. This little one very active :)

Baby Matteo update

I got to see our little bean flickering and jumping around today

It looks like the due date is 11/03/11

Happy 17 months Isla

1. you nursed for the last time this morning :(
2. you love rice milk in your bottles and will take if from Daddy in the evening and at night
3. you have taken so well to your toddler bed and sometimes after I put you to bed you get up and try to open the other and when you can't you just crawl back into bed, cuddle up with your "friends" and go to sleep. Much better then what Maja used to do which was fall asleep by the door on the wood floor :)

4. you've had your first popsicle... yum. Yes... we gave you the lime one that nobody likes but you seemed to be ok with that :)

5. you are still much of a destructive tornado
6. your vocabulary is amazing and I've lost count of the many words you know now
7. I love how you say no and you stick out your pointer finger at people to make it clear :)
8. you started singing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider"
9. every time you get even a little hurt you have to get your "awie awie" kissed, even though you are still a tough kid and don't really get hurt
10. you take such good care of your "babies". You nurse them and cuddle them and make sure they get have their blankies with them
11. you love books just as much as your sister

Not good

When you have little children, ALWAYS use furniture straps.

One morning I woke up to a huge noise and at first I thought it was Isla who pushed out the gate out of her room but when I rushed into Maja's room and I saw this and heard her crying I almost had a heart attack. Luckily she must have noticed it falling over and she moved out of the way to the other side.

The sun is out and the girls are out

The weather here has actually been pretty sunny and warm for a while however, the wind... the wind is so terrible that you can't even leave your FULL garbage can out the night before because it will likely be all over the street in the morning.
I'm pretty sure the girls would just fly away if I let them out there

But finally we got a few great non windy days so we decided to break in the sandbox. They loved it, including the mandatory bath afterwords. Isla of course had to taste it... and then wash her face in the water table!

Our little Picasso has done it again

OK, I am biased but this time you gotta give it to me... isn't this an awesome looking plane for a 2.5 year old???

Granted the little blop in the top corner is supposed to be her PJs and that's a helicopter in the bottom corner but hey... she obviously has a great imagination :)

ABCs and 123s

Maja has been watching this show on Netflix called Word World and it's all about letters and their sounds. Maybe it's just a coincidence but not only can she now sing her ABCs but she can tell some letters by the sounds they make. We've also been playing a lot with her bath letters so that helps too.

And she can almost make it counting all the way through 10

It makes me feel just a little better. Since she was born in August we have a choice of keeping her home for an extra year but we won't so she will start kindergarten just a few days after turning 5 and many of her classmates will be almost a full year older.
Sometimes I wonder if making her go in so young will make her struggle later on but given she enjoys learning, is super excited about starting preschool this Fall (I expect lots of tears though!) and overall she seems to keep up pretty well playing with older children I think she will do just fine.

Big girl

Isla started climbing out of her crib! that little stinker... I should have known she would figure it out soon enough. Maja never even showed interest in trying. She felt safe and happy in the crib. Isla however, lives for new challenges.

One day we were all taking a nap and I woke up to Maja sitting quietly by her door and Isla screaming in her room. I went in to get her and I found her on the floor stuck between the crib and the chair. At first I thought maybe Maja had helped her but the next day I caught her in the middle of escaping.

So toddler bed it is for the little monkey. I was planning on switching her anyway but I wish I had the backup of the crib.

She has been in it for almost a week and so far she's doing really well. She falls asleep on her own after I nurse her and except a couple of random nights she seems to be down to being up just once per night.

Next step is weaning her of the breast :)

Good things come in threes

I better come out of the closet....

Funny story about it... I had taken a test but looked at it right way to find a very clear single line (negative). I meant to throw it away but got sidetracked so after putting it back in the box I left it on the counter and went about my day. The next day I noticed the box sitting in the bathroom so I looked inside and lo and behold there were two lines!! very faint but definitely there and as they say "a line is a line".
It was late already and I was half convinced it was just an evap line (I mean, there is a reason they say the results are not correct after 30 mins or so, right?) so I waited until the next morning and run out to get a digital test. I didn't want to deal with wondering whether or not another line is clear enough.

Well this one seemed pretty clear :)... and those that came after it... you know, for good measure!

Haven't seen my Dr yet but it looks like baby Matteo and Isla's birthdays will be just a few days apart